End of Year Wrap Up!

Parents and Families, 
What an amazing year we have had in Room 107! We have come such a long way since we first began building our little community in August. I have really enjoyed watching every student grow and mature this year. This group was such a pleasure to work with- all our kiddos were so enthusiastic and eager to learn. I am going to miss them so much, but am looking forward to saying hi to everyone in the hallway next year. Please enjoy these (many!) pictures of all our end of year activities, and remember to keep working over the summer! See you in August! 

Art Museum Trip: 

Spring Concert:

Zoology Unit: 

Field Day: 

Skate City: 

Wash Park:

Last Day!

Have a wonderful, fun, relaxing summer! 

Colfax Marathon

As you may have read in the Thursday Folders, I am running the half marathon for DPS Foundation. This charity is a great help to DPS, and we receive money for literacy and science curriculum. If you'd like to donate, you can visit my Colorado Gives page at https://www.coloradogives.org/heidiunger

Thanks! 

May Begins!

First of all, thank you to all the parents who were able to come and watch our kids perform Mama Panya's Pancakes on Friday! We had so much fun working on this play, and I hope you enjoyed the culmination of all our weeks of hard work. These types of experiences are so valuable for our kids because they integrate so many academic subjects and provide an opportunity for students to show what they've learned in a tangible way. I know every student felt proud of the work they put in; I certainly was. 
Also, I hope you'll be able to join us for our own Pancake Party on Monday! We will start at 2:45. We have plenty of ingredients on the way, so just bring your appetite if you can make it! 

Here are a few more updates on what we've been working on throughout April (besides learning our lines for the play!) 

Math: 
In math, we are starting to talk about fractions, and of course we are always looking for ways to connect this concept to real world scenarios. So, we used crackers to explore the concept of "equal shares", which is integral to understanding fractions as equal parts of a whole. We will continue to work with fraction notation over the rest of the year. Anytime you use fractions, talk about it with your student. Cooking is a great time to do this! Have your child help you with the measurements next time you make dinner. It's a great way to integrate so many math skills into a family activity. 

In math, we've also set up our School Store! Thank you so much to all the parents who brought things in to donate. 
Our kids LOVE shopping, adding up their total, and counting out their change. Each child has a wallet with their "paycheck" for the year. That amount is theirs to spend however they choose, so we discussed budgeting and how to make one amount last for a long time. With a practical way to apply this, our kids really demonstrate a lot of thinking skills when making their shopping choices. This is such a powerful way to practice important math skills and encourage financial awareness early on in life. You can help by having your child pay for small items at the grocery store when you have cash. 

Social Studies: 
To finish up our Kids Care Unit, our students picked an issue within the community and brainstormed solutions. We voted on the problem of littering around Denver, and we've done lots of work on outreach and involvement. Our kids showed incredible teamwork throughout this unit, designing and making posters together. We also enjoyed our walk around Lincoln cleaning up litter! This project was a really wonderful opportunity for our kids to practice awareness and notice how members of a community can have an impact. 

Pen Pals: 
Once again, we are writing to our pen pals in Lyon, France! This time, we drew monsters and wrote letters containing clues for our pen pals to find the letters. 
Next week, we will be mailing our letters and our pen pals have requested that we send them our personal addresses so they can continue to write over the summer. If you're comfortable with this, next week's homework folders will include an index card for us to include in the letters we mail. 

Finally, 

Thanks to all the parents who helped with the Cinco de Mayo festival after school on Friday! This was a great event, and our kids had a blast. 

April Update

Hi Parents and Families! 

First of all, so sorry that our blog hasn't been updated in so long! We've had so much going on over the past month and there is plenty left to accomplish over the remaining 7 weeks of first grade. 

Here are some of the things that we finished before spring break. 

Geography Unit: 

We had such a great time in our study of geography. We did a lot of work identifying the different levels of communities we are a part of. Then, we focused on our own country, and had a competition to see who could label the most states on a blank U.S. map. Congratulations to Cyrus who won! 

Math: 
In math, we've been continuing to work on our math fact fluency. This is a very important skill, as there is much evidence that automaticity with basic computation skills frees up cognitive ability for higher level thinking. So, it's really vital that students early on become fluent with their math facts and number sense. One game we have to play this is Sum Swamp. Anytime you have some time to do math with your kids, see how fast they can answer single digit addition problems. (See a few posts back for our Fact Power game! 

We've also been having an amazing time in Geometry. This is a great subject to get really hands on with! We spent a lot of time exploring our manipulatives (and building the foundation for our fractions unit coming up!) 

Social Studies: 

We've started our Interdisciplinary unit integrating reading, writing, and social studies all together into a wonderful unit called Kids Care. During this unit, we will examine stories from many different cultures and types of writing, all centering around the study of how people in a community work together to help each other. 

We started by acknowledging all the ways we help each other at school and how each student contributes to our classroom community. This was a wonderful 

 

Coming Up:
Throughout the rest of our Kids Care unit, we will be working on our play! Our kiddos have adapted the book Mama Panya's Pancakes into our own script, and your kids have probably already told you about how hard they are working to memorize their lines. Our performance will be Friday, May 2nd, at 3:00pm. We would love to have you join us if you can!