Rain, rain, go away...

I feel like I've used this title for a blog before, but wow!--the rain today was relentless!  Luckily, my kiddos have the routine of indoor recess down, so not going outside isn't as bad as it was the first couple weeks of school.  Still, though, Mother Nature, if you could send a little less rain until winter break (I wouldn't mind some snow!), Room 106 would thank you!

On to the good stuff...

To add to the dictionary:
chree = tree
ont = aunt (when you say "aunt" with a short o sound instead of a short a, this actually makes a lot of sense)


Alexander books
This week, we began our social studies unit of economics; Monday and Tuesday we learned about needs and wants, and today we began studying saving and spending.  As an introduction, I read the class Judith Viorst's Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday.  In this book, Alexander has a dollar, but instead of saving it--like his brothers do--he spends every penny of it on things he just wants, not things he needs.  The kids loved it, and it was a great review for needs/wants and introduction to the importance of saving money/implications of spending it.

 (You may know/ remember Alexander from his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day...)

Overheard in 1st grade:
This afternoon, as my class was lined up to walk out to the bus, I heard a few of my students talking about how they have "long names" and "short names."  (Translation: full names and nicknames.)  One student said, "Well my name is [first name] [middle name] [last name].  It's really long.  What's your holy name??"  I couldn't help but smile--he meant to ask "What's your whole name..."


Take away
We're really getting into subtraction, and my kiddos are really getting the hang of it!  We've started on story problems, and this makes so much of a difference--the children being able to picture a story really helps them to "get it."  We've read a couple of books about subtraction...and more to come in the next couple of days!

Exploring numbers
We began doing an exercise called "Today's Number," where we pick a number and see how many ways that can make it.  For example, the number 2 could be:
- February is the 2nd month
- When I hold up my thumb and pointer fingers, that is 2 fingers
- 1+1=2
- 2 is written as two
- In tally marks, 2 is  | |

Here is some of the great work that my kiddos produced!

More Marc Brown
I love Arthur books, but when I was at the library this weekend, I found a great book written by Laura Joy Rennert and illustrated by Marc Brown, and as I giggled to myself thumbing through it, I figured my class would love it, too.  It's a little long, so we only started the book today, but so far, Buying, Training & Caring for Your Dinosaur has been a hit!

Fingers crossed for some sun tomorrow!  I hope you all are having great weeks--we're halfway through!

Love from Room 106,
Allie