Gingerbread House

Everyone be safe and stay warm!  Today is a snow day!

Here's a picture of our classroom door and story map we have been working on this week.

Gingerbread Science

We noticed a pattern in some of the traditional Gingerbread stories this week.  The gingerbread man was warned by the fox to be careful not to fall in the river or he might "crumble to pieces".  So, we wondered, is the fox just being sly and lying or does would the G.B. really crumble in the water?  

Our experiment:  Predict.  Then, submerge a gingerbread man under the water. Observe.  Reflect on what we learned.

Ask your child what happened!  It made for an exciting afternoon!

Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!

This week we kicked off our gingerbread man unit!  We'll study traditional and modern versions of this fun folktale.  We will be comparing the many versions of the gingerbread man story using a story map to ensure our comprehension of the stories.  

Today, we created our gingerbread boys and girls!  These cuties will be decorating our hallway very soon!

Hat Day

Spirit Week!

Next week (Nov. 18 - 22) is spirit week at Fairview!  

Monday- crazy sock day

Tuesday- hat day

Wednesday- favorite sport team day

Thursday- twin day

Friday- pajama day

Artful Learning

Last week we began our first Artful Learning Unit focused around Hoagy Charmichael's song Lazy River.  You can listen to the song here:  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T7yCYXfTA3g. 

The first graders will study the concept of relationships as we continue through the inquiry centers in this unit.  

We will ask ourselves how our relationships with others and the world around us affect us. 

Today Mr. Grimme, our music teacher, visited our class and Ms. Parmenter's class came too. Mr. Grimme taught

us about beat and rhythm and why Hoagy's song is considered a jazz song.  Then, he played other versions of 

Lazy River by other famous artists like B.B. King and Michael Buble.  The first graders realized that the words 

were the same, but each song sounded a little different!  

Happy Halloween!

VIPs. 11/1/13

Halloween pictures coming soon!  (Mrs. Guinn's house lost power during the storm, so no photos were uploaded ....hopefully tonight!)

Usually we have 2 or 3 VIPs from our class each week.  However, this week we had SIX!  What a fantastic crew of kids!  Mrs, Guinn picked 2 VIPs, 3 specials teachers picked VIPs from our room, and a math teacher picked someone from our class too!  Take a look!

Reading Stamina

We have been working on our "reading stamina" during our reading block each morning for several months.  The children read "good fit books" - books that can be read by them, independently, with only a few errors.  Today, my reading group read for 17 minutes independently!  We are getting close to our 20 minute goal!   The children also work on writing, work with words, practice their fluency, work on vocabulary, listen to reading, work on reading comprehension, and much, much more during 105 minute reading block each morning!!

look!

"Look!  It's snowing!"  ....and a stampede to the window.

Caught in a web of learning

We have been busy learning with some nonfiction units of study lately.  The most recent: spiders!  Today we wrapped up our unit by observing some spiders hard at work in a time-lapse video.  Their webs took shape right before our eyes!  Then, the kids got to work with yarn as their "silk" and created  web on their chair.  We have a bit more respect for those creepy creatures now!

This spider hangs in our window!!

Jessie is hard at work building her web!

Jaiyla shows off her design.

Theo's finished project.

We Love Library Day!

An owl-standing class!

Officer Friendly Visit

Today we got a visit from Officer friendly.  She taught us 5 important rules (see pictures below) and then the children got to ask questions about her uniform and job.  

1. Never let anyone touch you who scares you, hurts you, or makes you feel uncomfortable.

2. Never ride in a car without a seatbelt.

3. Never go with a stranger.

4. Never touch or play with a gun.

5. Never put anything in your mouth that could hurt you.

Puzzle Friends

"Mrs. Guinn, can you take our picture and put it on the blog?"

Perfect Day at Peden Farm

Today was perfect!  We visited Peden Farm for the annual Children's Farm Festival.  Thank you to all of the parent and grandparent volunteers!  Here's just a bit of what we did today.  Pictures don't fully capture the joyful atmosphere at this event.  We had such fun!!

Wild Animal Show

Thursday we had our annual wild animal convocation. Ask your child about some of the incredible animals we saw!  Here's a picture of a Timber Wolf who stopped by at our convocation.