Rudolph

You know Dasher and Dancer and Miss Klipfel and Vixen. Mango and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall the most famous 1st graders of all? 1st graders started this adorable project with a directed drawing to make reindeer. They were instructed with step by step directions that turned into darling reindeer that were all just a little different. We then painted and of course added a glitter red nose.

Once our drawings were finished our reindeer came to life. Check it out with our song below:

Happy Holidays from all of us in 1st grade! Thank you for all the adorable holiday cards and the generous gifts. Have a wonderful relaxing vacation with your children. Klipfel & Kids will see you next year.

Grinch Day

1st graders had an idea, an awful idea, a wonderful awful idea...Grinch Day! All the Whos down in Whomeadow, the tall and the small, enjoyed an awfully wonderful Grinch Day. 1st grade gathered in the amphitheater and enjoyed the story How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Later, Klipfel and Kids worded on a Breakout EDU: Grinch Edition to stop the evil Grinch from stealing the holiday spirit. Students had to work collaboratively in teams to solve the clues and open all the locks.  

Later in the day, each 1st grader made their own Grinch card with pictures and kind messages to help grow another person's heart. We even got to visit different first grade classrooms while we worked.

At the end of the day, 1st graders then gathered around in a circle (just like the Whos) and played musical cards to the song, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. We passed our cards from one Who to the next until the singing stopped. Each 1st grader then got a card made by another 1st grader to help make their heart grow (it also helped grow their teachers' hearts). It was truly adorable!

We know the Grinch's heart was too sizes too small so 1st graders were on the lookout for others showing kindness to one and all throughout the day. We added lots of new hearts to our giant Grinch and learned the most important lesson of all.

Merry Grinchmas!

1st Grade Fairy Tales

Once upon a time, in a school far far away, the whole Fuller Meadow 1st grade, wrote two magical fairy tales. It all began many days ago with our collaborative brainstorming session to discuss potential fairy tale elements. Once writing and illustration were complete in all five classrooms, our group fairy tales were ready to be put together in Book Creator using a little extra fairy dust. 1st graders are pleased to present Princess Ruby and the Magic Wand and Princess Ruby and the Lava Lair!

Click the cover pictures above to be linked to a printable version of our book for you to cherish forever and ever. Below, watch the books as a movie, read aloud by our own fluent first graders!

Princess Ruby and the Magic Wand

Princess Ruby and the Lava Lair

You can also add The Adventures of Princess Ruby to your digital library.
Click on the links: Princess Ruby and the Magic Wand and Princess Ruby and the Lava Lair from an iPad, iPhone or tablet.

Then click on OPEN IN and then Open in (see illustration below)

Click Open in iBooks.

As the story goes, students and teachers lived happily ever after with a new magical tale added to their digital library to read again, and again and again.

Tri-Town 1st Grade Gingerbread Exchange

1st grade classrooms from Middleton, Boxford and Topsfield partnered up for the 2nd Annual 1st Grade Tri-Town Gingerbread Person Exchange. Each classroom was responsible for creating and decorating a gingerbread person and writing a letter to send to all the other classrooms. Klipfel and Kids got creative by drawing and decorating our very own gingerbread people. I love how different they all came out!

After our gingerbread people were ready, as a class we wrote a letter telling the other 1st graders about us. Top news to share included our LOVE for monkeys and our real winter fireplace in the classroom. Oh and we of course had to send along a joke. What do monkeys sing at the holidays? Jungle Bells, Jungle Bells!

Finally we packaged our gingerbread people and letters up and off in the mail they went. Now we wait for our twelve packages from the other 1st grade classrooms to arrive. We can't wait to learn about all the other 1st grade classes.

Check out more pictures of the project on Twitter with #TTUGingerbreadExchange. You can also see what the Tri-Town 1st Graders are up to be looking at #TTUGR1.

1st Grade Fairy Tale

Princes and princesses of 1st grade have been royally enjoying exploring the elements of fairy tales. We discussed how fairy tales are made up stories that usually have magical elements and often contain the number 3 or 7. Klipfel & Kids along with the rest of the Fuller Meadow 1st Graders were inspired to write our very own group fairy tale. We began with a collective brainstorming session to discuss possible story elements.

After coming up with some magical ideas, possible settings and even potential characters, each class had to determine which part of the fairy tale they would write. This year 1st graders across classrooms are writing two fairy tales with the same beginning. Meaning our tales will have common characters and settings but the events will be different. We will have so much comparing and contrasting to do! Here is how we broke each story into parts:

Klipfel & Kids rolled the dice and landed on the end, meaning we are responsible for writing the solution to our first grade fairy tale.

We are anxiously waiting for Mrs. Scharffenberg's class to write the beginning and Ms. Teixeira's class to write the middle so then we can get started. Once each class writes one part of the story we will then digitally illustrate the story and create a digital book. This really is one collaborative project! Stay tuned for our first grade fairy tales coming to an iPad near you soon.

First Grade Common Core Standard for Writing - W.1.6. With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

Shapes

1st graders have been busy exploring 2D plane shapes and 3D solid shapes. Students worked on distinguishing shapes by defining and non defining attributes. As part of our Math in Focus program we explored, identified and described plane and solid shapes. Students took plane and solid shapes to compose pictures. Partners worked on using good math vocabulary to discuss how many sides, vertices, edges and faces these shapes have.

Students then took cut outs of plane shapes to compose pictures in their math journals. Students counted the different number of triangles, circle, squares and rectangles in their creative pictures.

You can even make a monkey out of shapes! 

Our shape creating fun led us into a great discussion about the 2D and 3D shapes we see at school, at home and all over the world. Our emoji pillow is really a cylinder but has a face of a circle and our keyboards are rectangles. We even discovered that our tissue box is a rectangle prism with 6 faces, 12 edges, and 8 vertices!

What shapes do you see around you?