On August 28, we celebrated a very important day at school–our 10th day of first grade together! It was a very special day because 10 is SUCH AN IMPORTANT number to first graders (and in general!). We learned a new math game that day called Tenzi, which we loved, and we also read a really great book–Ten Black Dots.
After we read it, we talked about how we might try this same thing with our own black dots. We brainstormed some ideas and then got to work. We followed these directions, and made sure we used our self-talk (keeping track on our fingers to help us remember) to help make sure we had done all the steps.
First we planned out what we would make, and glued down our dots. We added details with a pencil, per the directions. 🙂
Our paintings all spent some time drying in the hall–and even before they were done they looked really good!
Our last step was to trace our details and then add a sentence that said “Ten black dots make a…” But that’s for another blog post. Come back soon to check that one out (after I take the pictures, LOL!)
What would you make with 10 black dots? Leave us a comment to tell us your ideas! We’d love to hear from you!
Every morning when we start our day, we make a rectangle (because our carpet doesn’t really allow us to make a circle–LOL), and talk about how we’re feeling. We talk about the zone of regulation we’re in (usually we’re green and blue!), and often there is a question that we all answer. Very early on, I used a question I stole from my 7th grader (thanks, Riley!)–what is your favorite breakfast food?
Not surprisingly, many kiddos around the circle mentioned pancakes. And very specifically, Luke said chocolate chip pancakes. :). It seemed like for the next few days, everything we read and everywhere we looked, we were seeing references of pancakes. This includes our cafeteria, where the “B” choice every Wednesday is pancakes for lunch. :). So….we decided that it would only make sense to have our very own pancake party!
The date was set, and as we awaited the day, we found as many pancake-inspired books to read to get us ready (and make us hungry!!). Check out what we found!
Then, on Friday, we were ready for our special pancake breakfast together! :). And I’d say, it was even better than we’ve even hoped!
Luke, with his chocolate chip pancakes. Thanks for the idea, buddy! YUM!!
This made our third snack-related day already (we’ve been together for 22 days), and we’re already planning our next! There really is something to be said about how special it is to share a meal together (stay tuned to see what it will be!). I have heard from many first graders that this was our best day yet! :).
Last year I wrote a story about my journey to understanding how and why directed drawing would be a good thing in the classroom. This year, I was even more dedicated to showing kiddos from the beginning how EVERYONE is an artist, as well as how important it is them know how to put their thinking into pictures. I decided that I’d start from the earliest days with this, and so we learned how to draw a boy and a girl.
I found a series of videos where an artist works with kids and teaches them how to draw things. In this one, he draws a boy and a girl and talks through variations you might do to make them different the next time you draw them. Here’s the video if you wanted to check it out:
As we watched the video, I drew the figures up on the board in great big form, and first graders tried it out on their smaller paper. They only had to do one or the other, but a couple took the challenge of drawing both the boy and the girl!
We stopped the video along the way to rewatch a step, or to answer questions. We erased, encouraged and enabled ourselves to not be perfect the first time we attempted this feat. We talked about how it’s true that this might be hard now, but that the next time we try it (to draw a kid or something else), it’ll be even easier since we’ve done it before. I heard many kids say how they were impressed by their first tries and also how happy they were at what their pictures looked like.
Another important thing I wanted kids to know how to do from the early days (because it’s a huge part of learning in our classroom) is to paint with watercolors.
So the next step, after we drew our kids was to learn how to paint them.
We talked about how to get water and carefully walk with it to our table (this is much harder than it might seem! 🙂 ), how much water to use to make the colors look richer or more transparent, as well as the order in which to paint so that the colors don’t run (yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, brown and then black). We also learned that when you make a painting, the whole paper has to be covered (with details and background). Then we tried it out for ourselves.
One thing I LOVE about doing whole-class learning like this, is that even though we’re all doing the same thing, we are all doing it in different ways. And I love how often a kiddo will do or say something that we can share, as it might be helpful to everyone at some point. This happened as I walked by and saw Finley doing this with his painting:
We shared how he outlined the figure with the background color to help make sure it was crisp and clear. Lots of kids tried it out, too! And wow–what a great thing to learn today and use for the whole year. And beyond!
After we were painted, we already had some pretty great results. 🙂
But we weren’t done yet! Last step was to trace our pencil marks with Sharpie and sign our work!
And so after all of that HARD WORK, we had a pretty fantastic painting and some skills we can learn for the whole year and beyond. Check them out!
I think I mentioned in an earlier post about how our goal for the first days of school is to make kids excited about school and get a feel for what the rest of our year will bring. Another way we decided to do this was to make ice cream for our first-day snack. I mean, come on–who wouldn’t want to come back after ICE CREAM on the first day of school? And if THAT doesn’t give a clue that this year will be fun-filled, I don’t know what would!
So, when, in the midst of spinning the cream as the first step to our ice-creamy goodness, I saw this in the mixer, I was less than impressed. 😦
Yes, friends, instead of ice cream….we had made….butter!!
I really just had to laugh as I explained to the kiddos what I saw in the mixer and then showed it to them on our big screen. I was glad that not a single kiddo was mad at me; somehow they seemed to understand that mistakes happen.
Mistakes happen….that’s the part of this story we honed in on. It was almost like I had done it on purpose (did I? hee hee) as a means of highlighting how messing up is how we learn new things. And now, we know that when you whip butter too long you get butter instead of whipped cream!
And don’t worry–I promised them that since we had messed up on our first try that I would try again and bring them some ice cream for their day 2 snack. And BOY was it yummy!
Oh, and we didn’t let that butter go to waste, either. The next day we had bread and butter, with some honey courtesy of our friend Jacob’s bees! Best of all worlds! 🙂
Here’s to a fun- and mistake-filled year in first grade!
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 