January Pictures

Here are some pictures from Literacy Week, the 100th Day and our caterpillars!

We are out of tissues again and appreciate any you could send in!

Ms. Gilbert

STEM Challenge

To wrap up our Weather Unit in science, we completed a STEM Challenge.  It helped us understand the power of wind and how to stay safe during a severe storm.

Just like in The Three Little Pigs we didn't all use the same materials.  

Here our our final houses. 

All of the houses survived the wind! After watching all of the "tests" were all able to come up with improvements that would make them withstand even higher winds!

Our wind was provided by a hair dryer!

I only have a few other pictures from our week. On Wednesday I shared our "Daily 5" routine with the rest of the teachers at Osceola during a professional development meeting. Here are some of the pictures I used in my presentation.

Here is what we will be learning about next week:

In reading, first grade will continue to read informational texts and gather information about penguins while second grade will be doing the same for bears. 

In phonics, we will be working on "ou" and "ow" words. We will be reviewing those tricky long e words, too!

In math, first grade will be adding and subtracting multiples of ten and continuing to measure to the nearest inch.  Second grade will be continuing to work on measurement. 

In science, we will be learning about the states of matter. 

In social studies, we will continue to learn about maps! 

Have a great 3 day weekend! See you Tuesday!

Ms. Gilbert

Hundredth Day Ideas

Friday, January 30 will be the 100th Day of School!  To help us celebrate we will be dressing like we are 100 years old.

Reminders:

• Dressing up is OPTIONAL.  
• Students MUST follow the dress code.

Here are some pictures of how students dressed in the past!

Ms. Gilbert

Merry Christmas!

I hope you are all having a wonderful and relaxing winter break! We had a busy last week of school......lots of learning, testing, coughing and sneezing!  Rest up and feel better, everyone!

Here are some pictures from the week.  

Mrs. Orr read one of Ms. Gilbert's favorite stories to us and brought us yummy treats! Kids-tell your families what Opus wanted for Christmas.

On Grinch Day, Mrs. Keck saved the day! Since Ms. Gilbert lost her voice she came and read How the Grinch Stole Christmas to us!

Chip played a word work game with Zero the Hero's helper, had some trouble with toilet paper, pretended he was Olaf and got taped to the window by the Grinch. Don't worry, our kindness impressed the mean green guy so much he ended up being a pretty nice guy after all.

Snow Day was so much fun! We read Snowzilla, wrote alliterations, played a minute to win it game and enjoyed hot cocoa and "snowballs" while we watched Frozen! 

Thank you families for sending in supplies for Snow Day! We couldn't have done it without you!

See you in January.

Ms. Gilbert

Chip Has Been Busy......

And so have we!

We took our VLT's (Volusia Literacy Tests) this week and all worked very hard! First graders had a field trip to the museum, we all practiced computer programming and we finished up our letters trying to persuade Santa to hire us as one of his elves. 

Chip was busy too! 

He tried to help Ms. Gilbert out by making copies for her. He decided using the copy machine was harder than it looks!

He also helped us decorate by making a Christmas Tree for us. It looked very pretty but he had a little trouble with the sticky tape!

Chip also made himself into a snowman because he hung out with Frosty one night at the North Pole. 

Being a snowman made him want to bring us some snowballs from the North Pole. Apparently Zero the Hero double dog dared him to throw one. You can see what happened next!

All of the snow must have made Chip sick because he didn't leave us a note on Friday. This is where we found him. 

We sure hope he feels better soon! 

Next week will be fun but we will still have lots of work to do. We have to take our VMT's (Volusia Math Tests), will be finishing up our weather unit in science and our changes in America unit in social studies. 

  

Here is our schedule:

Monday - Gingerbread Day. We will be reading and comparing the many different versions of the Gingerbread Man.  

Tuesday - Grinch Day. We will read How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Wear green!

Wednesday - Polar Express Day. Remember to bring in something to share about your favorite holiday custom.  

Thursday - Snow Day. Please sign and return the permission slip if you give your child permission to watch Frozen with us! Wear your pajamas! 

Friday - No School! 

I am looking forward to our fun week of learning next week!
Ms. Gilbert

Hour of Code

For STEM today we practiced coding like computer programers do!  Here are the links to the two FREE apps we used on the iPads today.  They can be done on computers, too!

http://lightbot.com/hoc2014.html

http://www.thefoos.com/hourofcode/

Ms. Gilbert

Fantastic Fun Learning

We had a great week. After having 5 days off for Thanksgiving we were ready to learn! On Monday our Elf on the Shelf arrived.

He came with a book, a letter from Santa and a writing activity for us. We each had to think of a name for him. We wrote our suggestions and gave a reason why we thought it was a good elf name. We put our suggestions back in the bag and the elf took them to Santa. The next day Santa sent his four favorite names back to us. They were Jingle, Jolly, Chip and Elfie. We all voted and chose to name him Chip. (Since Santa likes chocolate chip cookies!) 

Chip was as busy as we were this week. 

On Thursday he left us magic elf seeds. We planted them and we must have been REALLY good because they grew into candy canes!

We were also very busy writing letters to Santa. We are trying to persuade him to hire us as his elves. The letters are fantastic. Santa is going to have a very hard time choosing new elves!

We learned about the sun and its energy. Special UV Light Beads helped us learn about the helpful and harmful effects of the sun. 

This week we are going to build solar ovens as a STEM Project. With everything we learned about the Sun's energy I bet they are going to cook yummy treats!

Reading Counts News: we have all earned our first award!!!!!!!!!!!!  WooHoo! That is a HUGE accomplishment. We were the second class in the ENTIRE school to have 100% of our class earning an award. I am very proud of our hard work in reading!

First Graders don't forget to return your permission slip so you can go on our field trip to the museum!

Ms. Gilbert