Animal Fantasy

1st grader have been spending the month doing an animal fantasy genre study.  Readers loved reading and learning with the hilarious Elephant and Piggie by Mo Willems. Students partner read and made their own Elephant and Piggie style writing to help figure out why these books are considered animal fantasy. In animal fantasy books animals can talk, come to life and even eat ice cream.

Click here to listen to Pete's song 

Pete the Cat helped us learn with his positive attitude and catchy songs. We read all the Pete the Cat books by Eric Litwin and enjoyed his brand new book Groovy Joe.  We can't learn about Pete the Cat without practicing our color words. We then used sticky notes to brainstorm describing words about Pete.

Pete visited in math and helped us graph and analyze our favorite colors. We found that the number of students who like blue is less than the number who like red. We then compared our color graph to the graph filled out by visitors to our classroom for open house. Purple got the most parent votes.  The number of students who like green is the same as the number of visitors that like green. Check our graphs out below. What do you notice?

Pete's attitude had been with us all month: no matter what happened, we kept working and singing our song!

Open House

Normally, Klipfel & Kids looks like this...

Tonight, Klipfel & Kids looked like this...

It was a pleasure meeting all of you at Open House. The boys and girls will love seeing your picture, names on the Smartboard and reading your notes. Oh and of course they will be so suprised that you helped earn them some Klipfel Kash. Thank you for your continual support from home during this school year. I look forward to seeing you again soon!

Dot Day

Today, Fuller Meadow celebrated International Dot Day inspired by Peter Reynold's book The Dot. Dot Day is a global celebration of creativity, courage and collaboration.  Polka dots, creative dots and even dot socks were everywhere!  Check out all the dots in room 116.

The Dot is the story of a caring teacher who dares a reluctant student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to "make her mark". After staring at her paper with no ideas for drawing, the little girl angrily jabs at the paper and says, "There!" Then, this one little dot marks the beginning of this girl's journey to find confidence and courage in her work.

First grade students were given the same challenge today-to make their mark in the world. After reading the story and listening to the adorable Dot Song (listen above), 1st graders made digital dots inspired by the story.

Check out the dots they created:

Throughout the day we encouraged any visitors to our classroom to make their mark as well. Mrs. Carreiro, Officer McParland, Mrs. Provost, Mrs. Disney and Mrs. Thomson were just some of the visitors who left their mark. In order to join in the international day, we made sure to tweet about it using the #dotday. Sorry to report but our tweet didn't make us famous even though many 1st graders thought it would. Maybe our next tweet will make it big.

To end our dot-tastic day, 1st graders collaborated to make our mark together and headed to the giant dot on our hot top.  

We encourage you to make your mark and see where it takes you...

1st Grade Dot!

Klipfel Kash

Money! Money! Money! 

Students have been hard at work earning Klipfel Kash. Klipfel Kash can be earned by following the classroom rules and showing outstanding behavior. Students might earn a dollar for including a friend, being kind to someone else, showing excellent manners, having a clean desk or simply following the directions. You just never know when you're going to earn some Kash.

All week students earn and store their money in wallets.  On Fridays, students take a visit to the Klipfel Konvenience Store to spend their hard earned cash. Prices range from $5, $10 and $20. Boys and girls remember to keep your eyes on those flyers, Klipfel Konvience Store often has sale prices for special occasions.

Make sure to pay the banker-correct change only.

Each week one of our class jobs is the banker. The banker double checks that all Kash has been counted correctly and finalizes the transaction. It's always fun to see who's a saver and who's a spender.

Friendship

The theme throughout Room 116 and Fuller Meadow for the month of September is friendship. As a class we read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. This popular tale of a mouse whose name just doesn't fit in, allowed our classroom to discuss character's feelings, author's message and ways to be a good friend. Each time Chrysanthemum was teased, we crumpled up a giant heart. Every time someone did something nice to her, we smoothed the heart out. By the end of the story, the heart was a wrinkled mess that couldn't be completely smoothed out.

The students made the connection that our own hearts can feel wrinkled and crumpled when someone says unkind words to us. After completing the story, students paired up to give each other compliments. We discussed how giving compliments and using kind words are ways to be show friendship.1st graders then signed their names to a band-aid as a way to show that we will all think before we speak because wrinkled hearts are hard to heal.

Before you speak, think and be smart.  It's hard to fix a wrinkled heart!

Friend Request Accepted

I am happy to report that all of us in first grade have made many new friends. Here's a quick glimpse into our first few days...

1st graders are becoming experts with the creative pen on the Smartboard, popping balloons to get to know each other, and illustrating our own selfies. Two days down and many more learning adventures ahead. Thanks for following us at Klipfel & Kids.

Klipfel & Kids

September 2016