100 Days Smarter!

 January has been a great month with a lot of great learning in room 28.  We had our 100 days of school celebration this past week.  We did many different activities in math and our Daily 5 jobs.   We had a 100 day poem, at the listening center we listened to a 100 day story and we wrote what we would want 100 of as well as what we would not want a 100 of.  In math we did a 100 day scoot, estimated and counted how far 100 steps would take us down the hallway, build a tower with 100 cubes and counted how many times we could do different things such as bounce a ball, hop on one foot and write our names in 100 seconds.


In math this month as we began to work with place value and two digit numbers.  We used place value blocks to work with numbers up to 120 understanding how many tens and ones numbers have.  We played different games.  One was a game matching the picture of tens and ones place value blocks with the two digit number.  We also started to learn about reading the clock to tell time.  We made our own clocks and tell the time every morning during morning meeting.   Here you can see how we played one of our math games...

 We continued our science work with sound and light.  We discussed what our light sources are and investigated what makes a shadow.  We learned that objects can be opaque, translucent or transparent.  In our investigation we worked with different objects to see which objects made a shadow when light was shined on it.  We then investigated how we could redirect or reflect light with a mirror.  We tried to redirect light onto the table, floor, wall and ceiling.  We have been having so much fun doing these investigations and working together with our friends!  Here we are doing some of the investigations...

This month we also began our new topic of writing: informational (or teaching) books.  We started by brainstorming all the topics that our first graders are experts.  It was amazing to see all the different topics that interest the kids.  We reviewed how writers plan their writing across pages before even writing.  We learned how our voice changes from a story telling voice to a teaching voice.  We learned different ways to add more to our story to give the reader even more information by using the pictures and writing twin sentences.  We worked with small groups and shared our books as well as working with writing partners.  We each helped our partner to check our mechanics of our writing and help to make sure it makes sense.  After we did our editing we had a museum walk and read all of our classmates books.