Doubles Plus One!

Take a look at our Educreations from today's math lesson.  Students in my math class have been learning about the doubles and doubles plus one addition strategies.  Let them teach you how to use the doubles plus one strategy:

Eliza:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/eliza2/20242679/?s=ViaBUU&ref=appemail

Lizzy:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/lizzy-doubles-3/20242783/?s=2NhYVr&ref=appemail

Lukas:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/lukas-doubles/20242439/?s=ET2gBA&ref=appemail

Kennedy:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/kennedy-doubles/20242320/?s=S0W46P&ref=appemail

Great work, first grade mathematicians!  Mr. Hanes and I were very proud of your creative thinking and the resilience you showed as you were working today.  

Check back next week for two more friends' videos on using this strategy (they didn't quite finish today).

A Mystery in 1A!

We always get so excited when our Mystery Reader envelope appears in our classroom.  When we saw it hanging in our room last week, the children quickly pointed it out to me!

Our clues for this Mystery Reader were:

• I have brown hair.
• I have 2 kid.
• I am a teacher.  

Many of our friends in 1A was SURE this was their own teacher after this clue.  They concluded that Disco was my second kid!

• One of my favorite foods is tacos.
• I LOVE to play Just Dance 2014 with my babes!!

Some of the kids have figured out that there's only a few families who haven't surprised us as Mystery Readers thus far.  Francis concluded it had to be his mom or Dylan's, but Dylan said it couldn't be his since his mom. isn't a teacher.  This sealed it and Francis was quite sure his mom would be our reader.  

He was correct..... however he didn't know his younger sister, Felice,  would also show up to share some time in our room!  

Ms. S read The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by A. Wolf:

Many friends in 1A seem to agree that the Wolf's point of view might actually be the REAL point of view!  

Ms. S also read The 3 Ninja Pigs by Corey Rosen Schwartz:

After listening to these versions of the familiar story, we enjoyed some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies..... YUM!  It was another fabulous Mystery Reader visit! 

First Graders, which 3 little pig story do you like best?  Post a comment to share with all of us.  

New Adventure

As I shared this week, our family is getting ready to embark on a new adventure!  After calling Baltimore home for almost 20 years, we've decided it's time for a move.  In October, we'll be packing our things and moving just outside of Denver, Colorado (Castle Rock to be exact)!

When I told the kids on Friday, many of them asked questions about our new house so I told them I'd post a few pictures.

We are having a new house built, so when we were there it looked like this:

Just a snow covered lot! We're very excited about the open space behind our house!

 Here's a picture of what the outside will look like although our house will likely be a different color:

And here's one of the inside of the model home:

We'll have lots of room for guests, so Mason hopes his friends and their families will come to visit!  

First graders, how many different houses have you lived in or how many times have you moved?  Did you know that when I was growing up, I lived in 5 different states?  I was born in Minnesota but then we lived in California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Maryland!  We moved a bunch.  Post a comment to share with us how many times you've moved.

I Wanna Rock!

We rocked out to the third, fourth and fifth grade rock bands during our assembly on Friday!  Here's a few pictures of first grade rocking out in our PJs!:

The Day of the Book

Our April PLUSS day was such a wonderful day!  We enjoyed "The Day of the Book" a vision of our Middle School Librarian, Mrs. Montrie.  As some of you in our community know, Mrs. Montrie is courageously fighting cancer and hasn't been in school for many months.  Mr. Scott and Mrs. Rutstein along with others were determined to make her vision a reality and that's just what they did!

On Monday, first graders made their selections for The Day of the Book from over 80 options.  All students in 1A were encouraged to select one session with our visiting Caldecott winning illustrator, Pamela Zagarenski.  This left two sessions for them to choose what they'd like to learn about.  Lower school and Middle School students and faculty members lead sessions ranging from book creation, cartooning, making bookworms, and playing games with a book theme.

Many of our 1A students blogged about their day on their personal blogs which you can access here:

http://kidblog.org/MissMunteansFriendsinFirst/

Take a peek at who has commented on the posts where her session was highlighted!  SO COOL!!

Our day wrapped up with an all LS and MS school DEAR  (Drop Everything And Read) time on the field and a LS Smackdown- a period of reflection.  

Hopefully your child came home with many positive things to say about this day as I think it was a day they really enjoyed and will remember for years to come.  

Because we were all spread out, I wasn't able to get too many photos, but managed to get a few here and there:

Illustrating with Pamela Zagarenski!

First graders, what was the highlight of your day?  Post a comment with all of us to share. 

Taking Off on Another Adventure

Just after returning from Spring Break, first grade gathered their passports and their luggage and took off to El Salvador!  Here's a few pictures from our journey.

Captain Knott, greeted us from the cockpit.

He gave us the rundown of our flight.

Our journey of approximately 1,942 miles would take an estimated 4 hours!

Captain Knott's brother, Mr. Scott, his son, Robby, and Senor Pena-Welch, a native of El Salvador,  made us a tasty in- flight snack for our long flight....... Pupusas!  Most of us really enjoyed this treat from El Salvador!

First graders what would you like to learn about El Salvador? Post a comment to share with all of us.

Hmmm...... It's a Mystery!

Our little blog has been feeling neglected!  Sorry!  It's been a busy few weeks with Spring Break and getting back into the groove of things after break.

On the Friday before Spring Break, we enjoyed a visit from yet another Mystery Reader............The clues we were given were:
1.  I am a Mommy.
2.  I have dark long hair.
3.  I love to read.
4.  I have 3 children at Friends School.
5.  I love music especially Bob Marley (so does Miss Muntean!).

Hmmmmm......... Who could this be?  This Mystery was solved by a few in our class and Hannah knew for sure it could only be her Mom, Mrs. D!

Mrs. D read several books to us including The Leprechaun's Gold, Crazy Hair, and Hooray for Reading Day!

It was another fantastic Mystery Reader visit!  Thank you, Mrs. D!