Sorry for the delay on posting on here!  So much has been happening in our room it is hard to keep up with us!  Last Friday was National Dot Day and we had a great day celebrating!  We started out by reading the book The Dot, and discussing how many of us felt the same way when we were asked to draw or paint a picture.  I then gave all the students their own dot to "make their mark with."  The only instruction they had for this dot was to make it their own.  We glued our dots into a frame and displayed them on our lockers for the whole school to see on their gallery walk. 

Since last Friday was also picture day we decided to paint our Dot Day t-shirts on Thursday. We combined with the other first grade class and a Kindergarten class in the gym and all worked on our t-shirts together. When we were not painting our shirts we were working on making patterns with math boxes.

A special day at school would not be complete without a special snack.  To incorporate Math into Dot Day we made dot brownies as a class.  Following directions, measuring and counting were our areas to focus on.  Dot day brownies are easy to make, simply follow the directions on the box and have students add M&M's 2 at a time and have them practice counting by two's every time they drop two in. :-)    
 

Last Friday our sound was /b/. In order to incorporate Jolly Phonics into Dot day we created a Bubble Gum Machine (with the help of Mrs. Billups!). Each student picked their favorite flavor/color of bubble gum and added to the machine. 
 

September 20 was the anniversary of the invention of the ice cream cone!  We celebrated this special day by discussing what an invention was, who inventors are and of course enjoyed a special ice cream treat. A huge thank you to Steve Yotty for letting us walk to Yotty's and enjoy a sweet treat. Throughout the day students wrote about their favorite flavor of ice cream, what we did at the ice cream shop and had fun working together on an ice cream word find.  It was a beautiful day to walk and enjoy some ice cream.

We are cruising right along with our Jolly Phonics sounds. Your son or daughter has learned 23 sounds and can read and write MANY, MANY WORDS!!  Please keep up the great work that you are doing with them at home.  Check out the right hand side of our blog. I am going to add a word list so that you can see some examples of the words we are working with throughout the week.  

In Math we are moving along into Unit 2. We really start to dive into some hard concepts in the coming month. Students will be introduced to both pennies and nickels. They will be counting them separately and together.  We will also start to work on exchanging 5 pennies for one nickel.  Counting money is something that we will focus on all year long.  It is by far one of the hardest parts of first grade.  We will work together here at school to learn from each other and practice our skills.  At home it can also be very beneficial if you work on counting coins as well. 

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!