Partners to ten

Along with solving mystery numbers in numbers sentences, a big focus in math has been building fluency with partners to make 10. The othr day we played a fun game to practice this. One child held a card on their head and the partner told them the number that goes with their card to make ten. Then the child had to figure out the number! So fun!

Sprints

Have you heard about the sprints we are doing in math? Each day we warm up our brains by doing a sprint. These sprints are different tasks that are timed for a short time (usually one minute). This builds fluency. The children are loving seeing their improvement each day. The sprints change every so often and we are loving them!

Pete the cat

Today we read Pete The Cat. To practice using scissors and glue, we created our own cats and wrote about what we would do in our school shoes. Look for these at Open House!

Exploring materials

Each day the students are exploring different materials available in the classroom. We are discovering different ways they can be used and how to care for them. We have used pattern blocks, unifix cubes, dominoes, tiny sea creatures and bugs and frogs, wooden blocks and more! Ask your child which material they have enjoyed using and how they used it!

First day!

The first day of first grade was great! Here are some photos of our day:

Year books

We've started working on a project to remember this fabulous kindergarten year. We are making year books! One of the pages we worked on today was about of school. We went outside to look closely at what our school looks like. The drawings are fabulous!

Stepping up!

I cannot tell you how fabulous our Step Up Day was for these 'first graders'! It was such an exciting morning. The children came to school looking older and more mature and ready to rise to the occasion of being first graders, if only for 45 minutes. The group worked so well together, I am really looking forward to next year!
I set the morning up to feel like it will in first grade. I had a morning message that each child needed to read and sign in on. Then we held a mini-morning meeting where my kindergarteners taught the other kids one of our favorite greetings. So many smiles and laughs were shared during this greeting! Thanks to Liz for snapping photos:

Then I did my famous lunch count guessing and read a book:

After the book, we brainstormed ideas that would make our weeks the best week ever. Then kids had to draw 4 things that would make their own Best Week Ever.

At the end, I waved my magic wand and turned them all into kindergarteners again... but it will be such a short time until they really ARE first graders. I told them all a little secret about first grade. I'll tell you too: first grade is the best!