Leverett School Grade 1 Joyful Learning For Young Children 

The current theme we are studying is Bears.  Right now we are doing research on different types of bears, learning how to highlight important information in the text, and how to record the information we find in lists and  sentences.  We are learning where they live, what they eat and key characteristics about each kind of bear.  Here are some pictures of the kids at work.  Some children are presenting the special facts they found onto the projector for the whole class to see.

 

Rob Buyea, who is the author of the book Because of Mr. Terupt, came to visit our classroom on Tuesday!  He is a real writer with 2 published books that are in our school library!  The kids were very excited to meet him.  One of his books is on the Massachusetts Children’s Book Award List.  He came to Leverett School to do a presentation for the older students.  We were very happy he came in to say hello to us, too.

…for magnets during science lab yesterday.  I got a phone call from Nancy saying, “Alissa, come down here with your camera.  They’re having so much fun.”  And they were!

Believe it or not, the 100th Day of School is right around the corner.  This is a big day in many 1st Grade classrooms.  Every morning at our morning meeting we talk about how many days we’ve been in school and how many tens and ones are in the number.  It’s a big part of our study of place value.  Then the “Class Historian” for the week records something special that is happening that day and we hang it on our wall to create our class number line, which is now winding around our classroom quickly approaching 100.

Today in school we talked about a special homework assignment the children have to make something using 100 objects.  It can be something simple like a picture with 100 stars or a necklace made out of 100 Cheerios.  Or it can be something more elaborate and creative.  The point is for the children to have fun with it and bring it to school sometime during the week of February 4th to share with the class.  The official 100th day should be on February 7th if no more snow days come up.

I’ll send another reminder home soon, but this is just a heads up to get everyone thinking!  The children had lots of ideas to share at our meeting today and lots of stories of what older siblings have created in the past.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with!

 

 

 

Every day we have a whole class math lesson from our Everyday Math program.  Then we complete practice journal pages that reinforce skills we are learning.  After that, the kids break up and choose math games to work with either by themselves or with a partner.  The best thing about this time is that children can choose a math game that interests them and challenges them to work at their own level.  Some are beginning multiplication and some are practicing addition facts to 12.  The best thing is that they are all having fun!  Math games is a popular time of our day.  Here are a few new games recently added to our shelves.

These girls are practicing skip counting using bead chains.

Here is a real favorite.  Circles and Stars uses skip counting to prepare children for multiplication.

These boys are practicing addition facts to 20 using an addition strip board.

This is our beautiful, new Montessori Hundred Board.  Children move wooden tiles around to find patterns with numbers 1-100.