Using Technology In Our Classroom

I'm sure your child has been telling you about all the great things we have been doing in the classroom. The students have been independently using the smart board during math stations and literacy centers. The students have also been using the laptops daily to post on their blogs or to work on raz kids. Lastly, the students have been using the iPads to tweet on twitter, work on sight words, work on math problem solving and have been making their own stories on puppet pals. Mrs. Belanger and I are working hard to help our students critique and create media that prepares them for the future. We are trying to foster a classroom that promotes students to be able to find, sort, analyze, create and collaborate in new media environments.

Read More

Is it January already?  Wow the time sure does fly when you are having fun!  We need to rewind because I have not shown you all the wonderful things we did in December.  So, I am rewinding the clock and I'm going to share some of our best memories of December.
We started off December, making gingerbread men.

Our gingerbread men before they went into the oven

We put the gingerbread into the oven and another teacher peeked into the sweet smelling oven and POP, the gingerbread men all came running out!  We decided we were going to find those gingerbread men, so we brainstormed a list of things to do.  We decided that the first thing to do would be to post LOST posters around the school.

We made our posters and posted them but no gingerbread men.
Our second step was to go for a hunt around the school.  We knew that these gingerbread men were sneaky from all the gingerbread books we had read so we knew we had to be very quiet.  Therefore, we took off our shoes and tiptoed through the halls.

getting ready to tip toe through the halls

We could not find those sneaky men so we wrote a letter and went to different classes to see if they had seen our gingerbread men.  We heard many stories and got many leads but we still could not find our gingerbread men.  We decided to read a different version of the gingerbread man to get some more information about gingerbread men.  We read "Gingerbread Baby."  We got a great idea from the story.  We decided to build our own gingerbread houses to lure the gingerbread men back.
We put yummy icing and enticing candies on our houses hoping that the gingerbread men would find our houses irresistible.

Making the houses

Working hard

Adding the finishing touches

All finished!

We finished our houses just in time for our fitness break.  When we came back into the classroom from being outside, we realized that our plan had worked!  The gingerbread came back to our room and loved their new houses!

You can't see him, but the gingerbread man is in his house!

Another wonderful memory we have of December is receiving many Christmas cards from different schools around the world.  We had a Christmas card exchange with students from British Columbia, New Zealand, Ontario, and different parts of the United States.  We also skyped with one of the classes from British Columbia.  They had a lot of snow when we spoke to them in early December!

Our first 2 Christmas cards, one from New Zealand and the other from Ontario

A card from British Columbia

The students reading the cards we recieved

 

We have many more memories of December but this post is already very long!  So, I will leave you with one more wonderful thing that happened in our classroom in December.  We were lucky enough to get 2 iPads to use!  The students are using them for math stations, they are learning their sight words on them, they are tweeting on them and 1 student even created a puppet show on one!  Ask your child if they have had the chance to use one yet and how much fun learning is in grade 1 at Eastwood!

We are playing games to learn our sight words.

Using the iPad to post on Twitter.

Read More

Winter Concert

The grade 1's have been working so hard practicing for the their winter concert on Tuesday night.  If you can't make it, there is a dress rehearsal on Monday at 11:15.  Come check it out or surprise your little one. They would love to see you there!

Read More

Visitors are Welcomed

Tomorrow we are having some primary teachers from another school visit us.  They are coming to see the wonderful things we are doing during our Math Station periods.  We are very excited to show them all the wonderful things we are doing in math.  Ask your child what they did during math today!

Read More

Parents, We Need Your Help

Greetings Wonderful Parents,

We wanted to ask for your help with some of the upcoming

activities we are planning.

On Wednesday November 30th, we will be decorating gingerbread

men.

We are asking if a few parents could purchase the gingerbread

dough supplies, and create the dough patties for us to use.

1 batch makes about 10-12 ornaments depending on the size of your

cookie cutters. (We are making patties.) Therefore we are asking

for 4 batches to be made. One batch from 4 different volunteers.

Gingerbread Recipe

1 cup dry ground cinnamon

1 Tablespoon dry ground cloves

1 Tablespoon dry ground nutmeg (can omit if you don't have)

3/4 cup applesauce

2 Tablespoons elmers glue (any white glue, we have this at school

so please don’t buy any.)

Mix applesauce and elmers, then add dry ingredients.

Work in dough ball, roll out, sprinkle surface with a little cinnamon

to keep from sticking.

If original batch is too wet, add more dry cinnamon.

Can you make (gingerbread patties) maybe layer each patty on a

separate piece of wax paper - so that each child can then use the

cookie cutter?

If you are able to help us out please send us a note in your child’s

agenda or call the school.

Thanks so much!

Mrs. Wideen and Mrs. Belanger

Read More

Grade 1's Spreading Some Holiday Cheer

Our class will be making Christmas cards for other grade 1 classes around the World this week.  So far we have 10 classes to exchange with.  We will be sending them a homemade card and some information about ourselves, our school and our city.  We are even sending a couple of cards to New Zealand.  Stay tuned and we will let you know how many cards we get in return and where they are from.  How exciting!

Read More

50th Day Of School

We had a great day today! To celebrate the 50th day of school we had a sock hop, a bubble gum blowing contest, we hula hooped, went bowling and even had root beer floats!

Read More