Butterflies & Tye Dye

Well, do you remember those amazing chrysalis' that we had in our classroom? There are very few left! Don't worry, they didn't die - the butterflies emerged this week! We tagged 14 butterflies this past week and there are more that have come out over the weekend ready to be tagged Monday morning! This has been an incredible life cycle for the kids to watch all the way through! Now we have some new caterpillars that we are watching closely. We are going to see if they will be butterflies or moths, since we now know how to tell the difference!

Math

The kids are doing AMAZING solving problems using tens. We solved multiplication and division problems this week using tens and also some 5's. One of our problems even went something like this: The butterfly had 4 wings. There were 11 spots on each wing. How many spots did the butterfly have? So some of the kids used cubes and acted it out with cubes and counted each one. Some of the kids drew pictures of the spots and counted them. Some of them even recognized that 11 is actually a 10 and a 1, so they counted by 10's (10, 20, 30, 40) and then added the ones (41, 42, 43, 44). Great strategies for so early in the year! Here's a video clip of Lexi and Laney solving a division problem. (For some reason the image is flipped and all of their numbers look like they were writing them backwards - but it's just the image!) The story was: The butterfly laid 45 eggs. She laid 5 on each leaf. How many leaves did the butterfly lay eggs on? You'll notice that they start out differently, but that they both are able to explain what they did to solve the problem. After the problem is over, the girls talked about their solutions and both ended up agreeing that it took 9 leaves. They also continued on to the next problem, working on it on their own and then sharing their strategy with each other.

Tie Dye!

Friday afternoon was spent tie dying our shirts for homecoming week. We had some great helpers come in to the classroom to help! Thanks to Sam's mom, Emma's mom, Lexi M.'s mom, and Jaden's mom for the great help! I couldn't have done it without them! The t-shirts turned out great and the kids were excited! We hung them on the fence outside (it was a beautiful afternoon) to dry and the kids took them home on Friday. Here are a few pictures, but Mrs. Barber also helped out and took more pictures. I hope to post those in a few days!

It's HOMECOMING week!

The kids will have a fun time dressing up this week.

Monday: Pajama Day

Tuesday: Dynamic Duo Day

Wednesday: Color Day (first grade is Tie Dye!)

Thursday: Beach Day

Friday: Blue & Silver Day (but our 1st graders will wear the Tie Dye again!!!)

20th Day!

“I’m a 10 because I like school.” is a common thing you hear during our circle time each morning. Each day, the kids are invited to sit in a circle and tell their classmates how they are feeling for the day, with a “10” meaning a great day and a “1” meaning a bad day. This has been a great way for us to learn things about each other and to share things in a safe environment. I’m so excited that the kids are liking school! I really feel that we have fallen into our routine and have learned classroom rules and expectations. We have had a great first 20 days!

Reading

Small group reading is up and running in full swing. The kids go through four reading centers each morning. They spend time in a fluency group reading and re-reading poems and books. Repeated practice makes people better readers! They also spend time in a Word Journeys group sorting words with spelling patterns and writing these patterns. This is also the group where they take their spelling test using the words from the refrigerator note homework. They also spend time working with words in our word work center. They have been manipulating sounds in words to make words, rolling dice with letters to make real and nonsense words and also working on rhyming patterns. Their last center is in the guided reading group with instruction at their level. We have books at their instructional levels that we read together and work on certain phonics patterns as well as comprehension and decoding words strategies.

Whole group time still involves writing interviews each day. We choose a student and ask them 5 questions. We then write a paragraph together about each child. I type those interviews up and they put them in their binders to re-read during fluency center. We’ve also been working on segmenting sounds and using this strategy to write with invented spelling. The number of words on our word wall is growing too! We are learning new words every day!

Math

We’ve still been spending time this week counting collections of buttons and jewels. Most of the students have found out that grouping by 10’s and then counting their collection is a much faster strategy than counting things by ones. This has also carried over and helped them to solve some addition problems this week. We discussed many different ways of solving addition problems too! We are at many different stages of problem solving right now. Some students are solving problems by counting out individual cubes, some are counting on from the larger number, and some are grouping and counting by 10’s. It’s fun to see the different strategies they come up with and how they grow in their problem solving.

Science

We now have about 20 monarch chrysalis’ in our classroom. We are patiently awaiting their emergence from the chrysalis next week!

We made sequencing flip books about a butterfly’s life cycle using sequence words. Emma’s mom came in on Friday to help us with some butterfly crafts too! They really brighten up our classroom!

Other News

Reminder: Refrigerator notes come home on Mondays. This page has the spelling pattern that your child will be working on for the week. Please help your child practice a few times each week!

Take Home Books: Beginning in October, each child will be bringing home a book each night. These will be books that they are able to read independently. We will ask that parents listen to their child read the book and sign the slip they bring home. There will be more info coming on that!

The kids look forward to Friday mornings to hear the football players read. Each week, a football player comes down to our classroom to read. This past Friday, we had Tom Devereaux read to us.

Homecoming is coming up at the end of the month. Color Day is on Wednesday, September 28^th. First grade’s color is tie dye. We will be doing this as a class project on Friday, September 23^rd. Therefore we are asking that each child bring a white or light colored t-shirt to tie dye. This does not have to be a new shirt. We will wear the t-shirts on color day and also again in the parade on Friday, September 30^th!

Tagging Butterflies

Katie, the BV County Naturalist was here today with some monarch butterflies. We talked about the difference between butterflies and moths and male and female monarchs. She also explained monarch migration to us before we put special tagging stickers on the butterfly wings and let them go. We are hoping to hear back from her later in the year if any of our butterflies are found in Mexico!

Here's a monarch that has the tag on it's wing.We are anxiously waiting for it to fly away!

Is it a boy or a girl? We learned that male monarchs have 2 blackdots on their bottom wings.

Megan's mom went caterpillar hunting and was able to find 32 caterpillars for our classroom. We have them in 2 butterfly habitats and are waiting for them to turn into a chrysalis (pupa) and then for them to emerge as monarchs! This caterpillar is already hanging upside down, ready to turn into a chrysalis.

Well, another week is done! I think the kids are getting more and more used tothe classroom routines. It's been pretty warm in the classroom, but hopefully September will bring cooler weather. The kids filled in their September calendars this past week and hopefully parents have had a chance to look them over. If not, here's a copy!

READING! We started small groups this past week. The kids are in reading groups of 4-6 kids and reading books at their own instructional level. While 1 group is with me, the other groups are doing other reading related activities. Some kids are re-reading with partners or whisper phones, others are working on word work with sounds and rhyming patterns, and others are doing our spelling program called Word Journeys. Mrs. Lindstrom comes over from the high school for the first 30 minutes of the day to help us out. It's great to have extra hands in the room!

SPELLING! We've started a spelling/phonics/word pattens program called Word Journeys. Students will bring home a "Refrigerator Note" on Mondays with the spelling pattern for the week. They will be tested over words with those patterns on Friday. Some of the words will be from the "refrigerator note," but others will be "transfer words" to see if they are able to transfer their knowledge into everyday use. If you have questions on this, please let me know.

MATH! We hit the road running with multiplication and division this week. It was great to see the kids solving problems their own ways and sharing their solutions with their friends and encouraging them to try other ways to solve things faster. The latest discovery in the week - it's faster to count things by grouping in 10's instead of 1's! Great discovery - all on their own!!

SCIENCE! We have continued talking about living and non-living things. Katie, the BV County Naturalist will be here this week to tag some butterflies. This will kick off a few weeks talking specifically about the awesome life cycle of butterflies and moths.

Book order notes are going home in Tuesday's folders (you can order through the order form and send it back to school, or order online with the directions attached to the book order).

Homework will also go home in Tuesday folders. Please watch your child complete - and maybe ask a few questions - and return it back to school Wednesday.

"Refrigerator notes" are going home on Wednesday. Normally, "refrigerator notes" will come home on Mondays, but with the holiday on Monday and the Julia Cook assembly during our reading group time on Tuesday, small group will have to wait until Wednesday to get running again!

Have a GREAT week!