Happy Halloween

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!  Richardson's ice cream that is.  I'll take a watermelon sherbet with chocolate jimmies, please!  Thank you to those who donated to our Halloween Party with delicious food and supplies. A special thanks to our room mothers for organizing our event and all the parents who helped during the big party. Costumes are on and we're ready for some Trick-or-Treating.  Happy Halloween from your favorite 1st graders!  See your sleepy sugary faces in the morning.

Leave us a comment with the total number of candy you collect tonight! You can even tell us how much candy you already ate.  

Pumpkin Patch Reader's Theater

1st graders have been working hard on their reading fluency and expression this month with a delightful Pumpkin Patch Reader's Theater. We practiced, performed, and then recorded our work, focusing on our expression and fluency. We even got a little fancy and used a green screen while recording to add a real pumpkin patch to our movie. Check it out below:

Make sure to be on the lookout for these future Hollywood actors and actresses.

Common Core State Standard R.F. 1.4: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

Perfect Plump Pumpkin Alliterations

Our perfectly pretty pumpkin published alliteration are done! Alliterations are sentences that have the same sound repeated at the beginning of many words. First, we used pictionaries to help brainstorm words that start with the beginning sound in our names. We unscrambled funny alliterations on the Smartboard to help us understand that our alliterations must make sense. Students then wrote a sentence to make their own alliterations that went with their adorable pumpkins.

Wait, we weren't done yet. Next, we used the iPads and took a picture of our pumpkins in the courtyard. As a class we recorded ourselves fluently reading our sentences using one of our favorite apps Chappterpix. Make sure to watch our final published piece above.

First Grade Common Core Standard for Writing: With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

Pumpkins!

A huge thank you to parents and families for their very generous donation of pumpkins for the whole classroom! We have made the most of this bountiful harvest and completed different learning activities with our pumpkins.

First, we turned into scientists to observe our pumpkins. We used all of our senses - we smelled the pumpkins, felt the pumpkins, and looked at the pumpkins' color, shape, texture, lines, etc.

Next, we decorated our orange friends and turned them into pumpkin pals.  We used them to help us practice our reading fluency.  Our pumpkins really enjoyed hearing our just right books!  

Stay tuned because next we are using our pumpkins for fun fall writing! 

Pumpkin Adjectives

Clever 1st graders practiced their knowledge of adjectives or words that describe nouns, by making adorable Adjective Pumpkins. Enthusiastic students chose an adjective from the back table and then created a pumpkin that matched that describing word.

Smart students really grasped the concept of an adjective with this activity...thank you Halloween!

Precious 1st graders were even coming up to our adjective wall to use them in their writing pieces.

They couldn't be making their happy teacher prouder!

Global Read Aloud

We can officially say we have a friend in Texas, well twenty-two friends actually. As part of the Global Read Aloud project, Klipfel & Kids virtually met another group of 1st graders in Texas. The Global Read Aloud mission is for one book to connect the world. Over the next few weeks we will be reading, doing activities, and working on comprehension skills while reading The BFG by Roald Dahl. 296,000 students, 5,600 different teachers in more than 60 different countries are already signed up to take part in this global project.

Friday afternoon we had our first Google Hangout to introduce ourselves and talk about the first few chapters of our shared story, The BFG. Our Texas friends were surprised to hear about our changing fall leaves and we couldn't believe that is was 90 degrees there on Friday!

To kick off the project, 1st graders used clues from the title, pictures, and cover to make predictions. Now we're ready to help Sophie and the BFG defeat the other giants and we are all looking forward to another date soon.

Klipfel & Kids by the Numbers

Math has been all about numbers. Number bonds, writing numbers, number words, comparing numbers, counting numbers, creating number patterns, adding numbers and number balances have been worked on so far in 1st grade...and it's just October. Here is a little Klipfel & Kids by the numbers...

One magnificent m loving monkey, Mango

Two groups of desks

Three student computers

Seven giggly girls

Nine handsome boys

Twelve brownies to fill a pan

Sixteen smiling students

And...

Too many monkeys to count!

We'd love for you to leave a comment with some numbers that represent you.