Leverett School Grade 1 Joyful Learning For Young Children 

In our classroom this week we had another musician perform for us!  Here is Gael on his guitar.  We love having so many musicians in our class!

Kids started bringing in maps from home and shared with the class the places their families have traveled to.  We heard lots of fun stories about where our 1st graders have been and where they hope to go someday.

The most fun part of our short week was today…Read A Thon!  Kids and teachers came to school in their pajamas and we made lots of extra time for reading today.  We also got to meet a lot of stuffed animals who came to school for the day.  Kids were being read to or reading to each other for most of the day!

 

And at quiet time we put on soft music and had time to just lay down and relax for a few minutes with our friends.

Or read some of the books WE WROTE to each other!

 

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a thankful turkey, so the kids worked hard to make one for you.  Inside is a poem they can read at Thanksgiving dinner.  I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!

Wow!  What a treat it was to have a special performance by our very own Adam Acker!  He played the guitar for us last Friday and the kids loved it!  He’s inspired other musicians to bring in their instruments for sharing time, too.  

We went out to the Greenhouse for the last time until spring.  It was cold out there with no sun!  The kids had to bundle up.  Dawn helped them make bird feeders out of pine cones to help our bird friends find food in these cold months.  I think all of us look forward to having Greenhouse in our schedule again come springtime.

Today’s social studies work was about landforms.  The children made landform books that you should see coming home in the backpacks today.

 

Next Tuesday, November 25th is Pajama Day!  Children are invited to wear their pajamas to school and settle in for a fun day filled with reading related activities.  Favorite stuffed animals are welcome to come to school to read with us, too!

 

We have new maps in our room!  Our science shelf has become a social studies shelf and the kids are taking them out as an independent work choice at reading workshop time.

Here is one of our Fundations lessons.  People often ask what “Fundations” is.  It is our spelling, phonics and handwriting program.  Here the kids are doing a digraph search around the room looking for words that have SH, CH, TH, WH or CK.

At math time we pulled out a new “Doubles Math” game.  Learning their doubles facts a math goal for 1st grade.  

In art this week, Miss Boss gave the kids the insect masks they have been working on.  Here is a “cute” picture and a “scary” picture!

Today we finished up our 3D maps of our bedrooms.  The children put labels in their boxes.  We took pictures of their work and hung them in the hall.  Come take a look!  Boxes went home with the kids today.  Have your child tell you about this project.

 

We even have a new app on our iPad that teaches us about the 7 continents.  

Here are some more proud puzzlers at work!

 

We are now moving on to learning about  Social Studies and we will be starting with maps.  For homework, the kids had to draw a picture of their room.  Then they came to school today and used a shoe box along with a lot of collage materials to create a 3D model of their rooms that MATCHED the map they drew.  That was the hard part!  But it was a lot of fun.  I wish you could have seen the mess it created in the room.  But the children were happy and quietly engaged in their work, which all means it was a success!  We had lots of help from Mrs. Gravina and Deb.

When the boxes were done children partnered up to compare projects and learn about each others’ rooms.  

Here are a couple examples of the maps they drew and the finished products.

 

It was a lot of fun comparing the two to see if they were the same.

 

Come by school to see them!  We may try and display them in the library soon.