Santa Claus is on His Way!

We performed "Santa Claus is on His Way" at our Grade 1 Tinsel Time concert. Bells were jingled and drums were banged as we sang and danced on the stage. Watch and enjoy!

Word Work Day

To prepare for the start of Word Work we learned how to complete many activities that involve using our No Excuse words, sounds we use to write words, and words we use in everyday writing. Thanks to all the parents that came and help us learn.

Here are some more Word Work Photos.

Pumpkin Patch

It was so much fun to visit the PTA Pumpkin Patch. The Kindergarten Group Room was converted into a wonderful patch of orange and yellow pumpkins and gourds. Mr Mutsch read us a story and then we got to choose our own pumpkin to take home.

We all thought it smelled like a farm in there!

Click here for more photos of our Pumpkin Patch fun!

Trick Crayfish

On Friday afternoon after all our UN DAY fun we had more fun with Science.

We began our Unit of Study called Balance and Motion.

We were introduced to a trick crayfish and investigated all the ways we could BALANCE him.

We discovered that we needed a balance point and sometimes we needed counterweights below the balance point to assist the balancing tricks.

Click here to see our Science investigations.

UN DAY

UN DAY was full of color, costumes, assemblies, food, and fun!

We came dressed in clothes that represent each of us in some way- our home, our country, our heritage. We marched together to the HS Gym to celebrate with all Primary and ECC children. Together there was more than 1000 children.

We watched the parade of Flags and each grade level sang a song of Peace and togetherness.

After the assembly we celebrated with a UN DAY lunch.

We had food from around the world and ate until we were full!

It was a great day that we shared with parents too.

Have a look at all the wonderful photos- click here.

COWS in the Classroom!!!

COWS came to our classroom to help us with our technology learning. Yes COWS!

C - Computers

O- on

W- wheels

Mr Shin- Gay and Mrs. Clark introduced us to Netbooks this week. We each got our own computer at our own desk. We learned how to care for the Netbook, how to use it and how to browse the internet. The tricky part was using our finger to navigate and not a mouse.

Click here for more photos.

Science Lab with Ms. Liddell

We visited the Science lab and begun our Plant unit with Ms. Liddell. It was so cool!

We were able to begin growing seeds using cotton wool and a little water.

We hope they grow!

Click here to see us all in Science Lab.

Our Neighborhood Walk

On Thursday 23rd September our class went out into the world to explore our local Woodlands neighborhood. We went on a Fact finding mission to discover what buildings, stores and jobs we have in our local Community. It was HOT and TIRING work but we did it!

Look at our photos to see what we discovered. Click here.

Thanks to Mr. Hvide and Ms. Shetty for helping us on our walk.

When we returned to school we began to map our local Community and

then started to "build" our local Community using craft supplies.

Writing Celebration

Last week we celebrated the end of Our First Writing Unit of Study- Writers Build Good Habits.

Children selected one of their stories to "publish" and then spent time Fixing and Fancying it up. They added a front and back cover.

They agreed that they can now:

• use pictures and words to tell a story



• choose an idea and write about it



• add details to their pictures



• add details to their words



• do their best and keep on going

They shared their FANTASTIC writing in a small group of friends and ended the celebration with a toast of juice- to good writing! Yeah!

Click here for more photos.

Reading Celebration

On Friday we completed the first Unit of Study in Reading- Readers Build Good Habits.
To celebrate we joined other classes in the first Grade Group room to practice how we Read to Self. The children also signed a "Read to Self" contract that reminds them that they must always:

• Read the whole time


• Read quietly


• Stay in one spot


• Get started straight away


• Build their reading stamina


• Take good care of books

Altogether the children read for 20 minutes, and then celebrated with a story from Mr. Hoss.

Grade 1 are very proud of themselves!!! Look here for photos of our Reading Celebration.

Our next Reading Unit of Study is "Readers Use Strategies to Figure out words".

The Stone in the Road

On Thursday, we were invited to the High School to watch a HS Drama production of The Stone in The Road. The children enjoyed the Fairy Tale and were involved in asking the cast questions at the end.

Ask your child to RETELL the story to you.

Use these pictures to prompt their Story Telling.

Writing Number Stories

After we became Wild Things and acted out our Number Stories we recorded them on paper. We had to draw a picture to represent our Number Story, write a Number Story and also a Number Model.

Math is a lot of FUN! See more of us writing Number stories here.

More Wild Things

We really enjoyed becoming Wild Things and creating Number stories.

This is what we looked like as Wild Things- BEWARE!!!!!!

For more photos of WILD THINGS click here.

Being Wild Things!

Before our students are asked to practice number facts, we find it important that they experience addition and subtraction as real world operations that can be represented with words or number models.
“Wild Things” is designed to help the kids develop these connections. As the students role-play, tell, write, share and solve number stories, they begin to learn the addition and subtraction language and symbols. The most important part is that they have having tons of fun in the process.
Hooray for the Wild Things! Here are a few and there will be more tomorrow!

Making Wild Things

Today we began to create costumes for Wild Things!

We read the story Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and then acted out the way that Wild Things behave and made a list of their features. We used colored paper to make Wild Thing bodies, arms, claws, legs and feet!

Tomorrow we will roar our terrible roars, gnash our terrible teeth, roll our terrible eyes and show our terrible claws as we act out Number stories in Math.

Come back to our Blog later and you will see some of our work.

Math explorations

Just like Christopher Columbus we explored!

We explored Geo Boards

We explored Base 10 blocks

We explored Pattern Blocks

We discovered thet elastic bands can stretch a long way and that we can make shapes and patterns with them.

We discovered that Base 10 blocks can balance on each other and create tall towers.

We discovered that Pattern blocks can be stacked on their sides to create patterns that go up!

Partner Reading

We love to share books and the best way to do that is to read with a partner.

• We sit EEKK- Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee.
• We use soft voices to read the book together.
• We stop and talk about the book and check our understanding.
• We read the whole time, with each other or page by page.

Ask me who my partner for reading is, and what types of books we like to read.

Our Favorite Books

We have been discovering our Reading Identities by sharing our favorite books. We learned about our interests, our home reading lives and built connections between us.

We now know that:

• some of us enjoy animal books



• some of us enjoy princess or fairy books



• some of us enjoy learning new information from books



• some of us enjoy fairy tales



• some of us like surprises in books!

We will have to look for a lot of these types of books to add to our classroom library!

Sharing our ME BAGS

Today we continued to get to know each other by sharing our Me Bags. We learned a lot about each students special interests.

Click here to see more of us sharing.

The First 3 Days of School

The first week of school was full of new friends, and new fun.

Check our photos to see what we got up to.Click on the colored words.

We had fun in the playground.

We had fun in our classroom with reading and writing.

We learned a new Math Game. using pennies.

A new school year! WELCOME to 2010-2011!!!

Hi all new first graders! Welcome to Mrs. Clark's Blogspot.

This is a place that we can share stories, news, and events with each other, our families and friends. We can post photos and movies and make comments about our Grade 1 learning.
I hope you come here often and check out what goes on in Mrs. Clark's classroom.

We are going to have so much fun this year!

I can't wait to get started.

100 Days of School was Cool!

On Friday the 5th February we celebrated 100 Days of Grade 1.

Click here to see photos of our Cool 100 Day Fun!

County Fair project

Hi everyone! I just wanted to give you all a sneak peek at the quilt for the County Fair. I've been working on it today and have the entire top together. The kids did a wonderful job on their squares and the quilt as a whole looks fabulous! I think this will be a much sought after piece at the fair!

Rachel O'Shea

Gamelan Orchestra

Watch us play the Gamelan instruments we learned in Music class.

Thanks Ms. Ganske for teaching us the culture and tradition of Gamelan.

We are learning from NON FICTION!

This week we have begun a study of Non Fiction. We sorted the books in our classroom library into Fiction and Non Fiction and have discovered that Non Fiction books are the ones that we can learn and share information from.

Our book boxes are now half full of Non Fiction and we are excited to learn a lot of new things about a variety of topics.

Click here to see us all reading Non Fiction in our classroom.

Here are some facts that we learned today from Non fiction:

Edaphosaurus has a sail on it's back to keep it hot or cold- Cal

Comets are balls of ice- Max

It rains for more than 300 days in some rainforests- Kami

A Nile crocodile is one of the deadliest creatures on earth- Otto

Fish swim near the top of the water- Gwyneth

Tennis started hundreds of years ago- Shveta

Volcanoes can be under the sea- David

There is pressure in water- Kenneth

Koalas have sharp claws for climbing trees- Amber

Some sharks have thousands of teeth- Cole

and there is more.......

Mad Scientists!

Yesterday we went to the MS Science lab. We experimented with dry ice and colored liquid. The green liquid changed to red when the dry ice was added.The carbon dioxide made the change happen. The yellow liquid exploded!!!

We had a Tea Party. Mr. Meehan poured the tea and it was clear until the third cup and it turned PINK! When he poured it back in it turned back to clear! We were amazed!

We worked with Science Buddies and did our own experiments. We made red liquid turn yellow, by adding baking soda and salt. It turned HOT to COLD. We recorded our findings on a worksheet that our Buddies had made by themselves for us.

Our visit was FUN! It was AWESOME! It was INCREDIBLE! It was so COOL!

Click here to see more photos.
Written by Clark kids.

A Visitor from Australia

Today we had a package delivered from Australia!

Tell me who it is and what kind of animal she is?

Pajama Day!

Reading really makes us feel good! Especially when we are in our Pajamas!

Today we forgot to put on our uniforms and came to school in Pajamas, slippers and robes.

We brought our cuddly friends and blankets too.

We used sheets to make reading tents (cubbies) in our classroom and it was lucky we had flashlights to read with.

Pajama Day was so much fun and we were excited about reading!

Click here for more photos