H for Hats, I for Interesting, J for Jokes, K for Kites, L for Lazy, M for music, N for Noodles

This week Ariston’s mom helped us celebrate No Ruz, the Persian New Year!

In Math the children have been working on place value concepts.  They have been solving two digit addition problems by building tens with the place value blocks.

The children have been working with the computer program “Scratch” during technology time with Jesse.  It is a fun introduction to basic programing skills.  The children each created a little character – a sprite- and have learned to add speech bubbles, animation and voices.  They can change the appearance of the character and the backgrounds.  They will continue working on this project over the next few weeks.

The TCS Post Office is open for business.  The first graders will collect and deliver mail each Tuesday and Thursday.  Parents who wish to participate may place letters in the white mailbox on the table outside of room 4.

This week the children really delved into writing. We have been reading the book “Clementine’s Letters” as our class read-aloud.  In this story, the main character and her dad are working on a book together.  First Clementine wrote a few sentences to get her dad started, then he wrote a few and they took turns throughout the story.  The children were inspired to try this interactive writing style themselves and they had a wonderful time working together to write fun, creative stories which they then shared with the class.

The children also began painting their individual canvases this week.  They each selected a Georgia O’Keeffe picture to emulate and everyone has begun to paint.  The kids also worked to finish up writing projects about Georgia.  They have written “What is an Artist?,” a letter to Georgia, and an acrostic poem based on her name.

Our field trip on Thursday morning was a great success!  Thank you to all of the parents who drove and/or chaperoned.  The docent at the San Diego Museum of Art told me that she was very impressed with our students’ level of knowledge and their good behavior.  She expressed interest in attending the Great Artist Grand Finale Exhibit.

A busy time in First Grade

The children are very excited about our Great Artist, Georgia O’Keeffe.  We have been reading about her life and her work and enjoying her beautiful and interesting art.  Her different periods appeal to different children and she seems to have something that resonates with everyone.  We have explored her works from the beautiful flowers to the desert scenes and even a train for our transportation enthusiasts.  The children are writing about her, reading about her and have been emulating her work in their sketchbooks.  Their first opportunity to paint was an exploration of color using the primary colors and blending them to create secondary colors.  The children have each chosen two works to use as an inspiration for their own works of art.

In math, the children have been working on place value skills and double-digit addition by building two digit numbers with cubes.  They are given a number, for example 34 and they must use cubes to build the number, but they must follow these rules:  they can use as many towers of 10 as they need, they can use NO towers larger than 10 and they can have only one tower smaller than 10.  Once they have built the number, they build a second number, for example 27, following the same rules and then they combine the towers to add the two numbers together, still following the rules.  This is a concrete beginning to build understanding of place value knowledge and begin to explore two-digit addition.

A highlight of the week was a lesson by Jesse Brand, our Director of Technology on the use of the laptops.  The children are anxious to begin using the laptops next Thursday.  Each child will be assigned a laptop to use for the year.  Each week the laptops will be available for their use in learning how to use the technology for a variety of educational purposes.  

We finished off the week with a birthday celebration – Happy Birthday Connor!