"WOAH WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR ROOM?!"

I surprised the kiddos this morning with a completely different set up of our room. I've noticed that we were all to squished at our tables, so during our break I completely rearranged the room. It has worked well these past two days and the kiddos really enjoy the change of scenery and they love their new table spots. I have enjoyed watching them interact with new table mates too, what a great way to build our community!

It took us awhile to get back into the swing of things, especially with our new room. We spent a lot of time practicing moving in our room, putting tools away, getting tools, walking in the hallways, and working together. One thing we are really focusing on is following a direction right away. (We have students that like to take "detours"...they go almost everywhere in our room instead of where they were directed to.) This makes our transitions longer, but eventually once we get them down they will be more efficient.

We have learned about nickels and are now tackling the task of counting nickels and pennies together. This is a very tricky thing but we are working hard and are coming along. We will practice this skill all week. We played two games to help us count- Nickel Grab and Penny/Nickel Grab. In both of these games each person grabs a handful of money, counts it, and the person with the most gets to keep the money. It's funny to watch eyes grow big as they accumulate more and more money. What's even better is listening to what each student would buy with "all that money":
a horse, a hammerhead shark, the moon, a million cookies, balloons, and peanuts.

Now that "the most wonderful time of the year" is finally upon us, we are going to start celebrating ALL holidays! The first grade team will be teaching students about Eid, Hanukkah, Christmas, Santa Lucia, Los Posados, and Diwali. Many of our families celebrate these holidays so it is intriguing to learn about them and each of our families. I'm excited to announce that on December 20th, the entire first grade will be visiting Crestview nursing home to sing holiday songs. This really is one of the most exciting and heartfelt events of the year that is adored by our kiddos as well as the residents. Everyday we will be practicing these songs in preparation.


Books We Read Today:

Beatrice's Goat - Paige McBrier
Betsy Who Cried Wolf - Gail Carlson Levine


Interesting Tidbits from our Day:

"Oh, thank goodness that break is over! I've been praying and praying, but it just wouldn't end!"

"Ms. Carlberg, did you know that santa can see you EVERYWHERE?! Even in your house...even in our school...even in our classroom!!.......... Oh oh, we better do our job."

"Gobble, gobble, cluck, cluck"

If you were passing by Room F on this short, two day week you might think it was teeming with turkeys! In Read Well we learned that female turkeys say, "cluck, cluck" while male turkeys say, "gobble gobble". Did you know there was a difference? I sure did not! After learning that, and in honor of Thanksgiving, we spent the two days greeting each other and activing like turkeys...it was silly and fun!

We spent the two days learning about Thanksgiving and which of our friends in our class celebrates it, but we focused even more on being thankful for what we have. It was interesting to watch our discussion grow in meaning. We started out being thankful for material things: toys, DSI's, TV's etc. As we had more time to talk, we discovered that the things we are most thankful for are not things, but instead people! We wrote letters to the people in our life whom we are thankful for and they were so touching!
This is one of the most powerful activities and discussions we have throughout the entire year and it was humbling and heartwarming.

We continued to celebrate the upcoming holiday by learning a new math game called Turkey Roll. In this game, the students are given a picture of a turkey that has the numbers 1-6 on it. The kiddos roll a die and then have to pair the number on the die with a number on the turkey to make 10. (If a kiddo rolls a four, they have to find and color a six on the turkey.) This game was perhaps the most popular one of the entire year! The kiddos really loved playing a game and having time to color and giggle.



Sparked by our miracle pumpkin that sprouted in our drain, we read another issue of Weekly Reader this week that taught about...you guessed it, pumpkins! We spent much of our time this fall learning about harvesting food, which included pumpkins. It was exciting to see how thrilled the students were that already knew the information!



 Check out the new home to our pumpkin sprout! It loves it's new home in the fishbowl on the window sill. More pictures and updates to come!





I wish everyone a nice long weekend full of family, relaxation, and peace. I am thankful for every one of the kiddos that spend their days in Room F and for their wonderful families!

"GET OUT YOUR SNOW PANTS! THE SNOW'S-A-COMIN'!"

The cold weather has sparked a tiny bit of chaos mixed with a tiny bit excitement mixed with a whole lot of drama in Room F. One student came in from morning recess, flopped on the floor, and proclaimed "I have NEVER been so cold in my whole life! I can't go on." Another came in and felt it was her duty to announce the possibility of snow which sparked the comment above. At the very mention of snow pants, students were jumping, smiling, laughing, and celebrating. As one who loves to ski, I must admit I was excited myself.

We have all been working with money this week! Some of us have started working with pennies and nickels while others have just started practicing with only pennies. It's exciting to have so many kiddos at different levels. Our discussion about what we could by was quite entertaining. Some of the answers were: chocolate (ok, I can see that), a new Hulk toy, lunch for our whole class, a new house, and a horse...a brown horse. While we learn about pennies we are all working on our cooperation skills-especially playing fair.

Conferences start tomorrow! We have been organizing, cleaning, and preparing our room so that we can invite our families in. We will have your kiddo's report card to share, test scores, some of our fall writing, and our reading levels to share. I love the opportunity to connect with families to update them, but also have them update me about important events in their and their kiddos life. I can't wait to see you all!

After school I was working preparing to teach after school and I went to the sink to wash my hands and saw this:

"Ok" I thought, it must be a plant or piece of grass that fell in the sink. When I went to take it out I saw this!:

That's right! A pumpkin seed that was washed off of our hands during pumpkin math has sprouted in our drain! I can't wait to show the kiddos tomorrow! 

Books We Read Today:

Kayden brought in "Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters" for us to read. He noticed the beautiful, detailed instructions and shared with us. Thanks Kayden!

Interesting Tidbits from the Day:

"SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" [followed by the most joyous laughter]

"Ms. Carlberg you are the most crazy beautiful teacher. Not bad crazy, but good crazy." 

"When is this 'wacky Wednesday' business going to stop? I've had enough."

"I won't tell you mom, but if you eat too many Cheetos you turn into one!"

As I snuck out the door for bus duty this morning, one of my kiddos caught me with a mug in my hand. After he asked me what I was drinking and realized that my mug was indeed full of Cheetos, he informed of that fact. Cheeto lovers beware! How fun to start my day off with a few tears of laughter.

We started something new today! Just like when some kiddos switch into other 1st grade rooms for Read Well, some of our friends moved rooms for math too! We had some friends from Room J and Room H join us and we had a blast! We worked very hard on using the words "after" and "more" when finding numbers on the 100's chart. (You would think it would be obvious, but it's a tough concept for our little ones.) Then, we worked with our math partners in our math journals. We used mini-clocks to help us tell time to the hour. We're experts already! We are all excited for our friends from other rooms to return during math time tomorrow.

Inspired by a group I'm in on Facebook called "30 Days of Gratitude", we started a new project today. Usually every year, we make a turkey and write a few things we are thankful for on it. This is different because everyday until our Fall break, we are going to be adding a feather to our turkey. Each feather has something that we are thankful for on it. It is so heartwarming to hear what our kiddos are thankful for. It is interesting to see the transformation of their thought as we have more and more discussions about it. Today most of our friends were thankful for their toys. This is great, but watch and see how our ideas change. Our turkeys are pretty bare today but I'll post pictures as we add on.

Remember conferences are this Thursday, next Monday, and next Wednesday! I'm so looking forward to meeting with families to discuss your fabulous child. If you have a question about the time (a confirmation slip was in your Thursday folder) please call or e-mail me.


Books We Read Today:
Bats at the Library - Brian Lies


Interesting Tidbits from our Day:
"Ms. Carlberg I noticed that the turkey is.... well.... you know.... [in a whisper voice] naked!" [Class bursts out laughing because the word naked was said!]

"I have an idea! When we are with everyone in our school, let's be role models!"

Not only do I find joy through our kiddos, but everyday I am absolutely floored by something that happens in Room F. The entire day was like that today! I was astounded by the amount of self-control we used throughout the day and how we helped others do the same. We put our problem solving skills (which we are slowly learning!) to use and solved our own problems today either right away or at the Peace Rug. It is hard for our students to know when they need to do this and even harder to do it, so it's impressive but not surprising that we are doing it! We had an All School Morning Meeting in the gym today and one of our kiddos suggested we do our job so we can be role models...and we did! I had two other teachers compliment us on how well we listened, followed directions, sat without talking to our neighbors, and were safe even when I wasn't looking. I wish you could be in here to see it throughout our day!

My absolute favorite part of the day was when Dheqa shared with us about Eid. She was brave and stood in front of our class to tell us about the holiday, what she did with her friends and family, and the traditions that take place. She even brought us a treat to enjoy with her. Not only was this fascinating for me and the other students to learn about, but it also helped us all make connections to each other. We noticed that Eid has similarities to other holidays coming up such as Hanukah, Kawanza, and Christmas. It taught us, yet again, that we can all be different but have things in common. 

We received a new tool to use this week. Weekly Reader is a magazine that is published by Scholastic that we receive every week. The money to purchase these (for our class but also for the entire 1st grade!) came from www.donorschoose.org. This organization facilitates donations to teachers in need. A teacher writes about something they need for their classroom and then visitors to the site decide what teacher/classroom they want to donate to. If you donated to this project, thank you! This week our reader was all about owls! Not only did this shock the students, but it made us feel very smart because we knew most of the information in it! Your child had the choice to bring it home, or keep it at school in their book bag for awhile. Look for one of these every week!

We also have a new student joining us in Room F! Leroy is new to our school and is already making friends in our class. Our kiddos are very empathetic to his new (and likely, intimidating) situation and are taking good care of him. I'm conviced this kiddo is unbeatable in the game, "Five Frame Go Fish"! I can't beat him!

Books We Read Today:

Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins - Dianne Ochiltree

Interesting Tidbits from our Day:

"Goodbye Ms. Carlberg, I love you." [Other kiddo whom I had already said goodbye to turns around, runs down the hallway back to me and shouts,] "I LOVE YOU TOO! I LOVE YOU TOO!" 

"I can tell it's Wacky Wednesday, because your hair looks wacky today." (haha, thanks kiddo...)

"Ms. Carlberg, we don't have to do this anymore it's wayyyy too easy!"

It's always an exciting day when you hear your students not only say that they know how to do something, but then actually know how to do it! We celebrated multiple successes in our room today:

1. Our Read Well time is now running like a well-oiled machine and it is producing growing readers! It has taken this long for our students to learn and follow through with all of the different routines of our reading time. Now that these are in place, every student is making progress! 
2. Every student in our class can now put together numbers to make ten! Not only can they put numbers together, but they can explain how they did it. Being able to explain your thinking takes a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the topic. This skill is going to make learning other new concepts easier. I am so proud of our hard work. 
3. We used self-control throughout our day and were even role models to other students! We are working on sitting silently in the hallway during our bathroom breaks. Today another teacher complimented us and commented on how we are great role models! WOOO HOO!

On top of celebrating today, we started two new things in math. First, we started working in our math journals with our math partners. Each student has a partner that they play games and work with during math time. Today I told the students which math journal page they were to work on, but did not explain any of the problems-they had to work together to read what to do and then do it. The cooperation that was happening in our room was astounding! We had students not only working together but also teaching each other, sharing ideas of how to solve the problems, and celebrating and laughing together! If you would have been there, you might have gotten a little misty eyed like myself. We also started using our math notebooks today by gluing in a story problem. Eventually, we will have new story problems to put in our math notebook every week but we're starting small with one. Today we only learned how to tell if the problem is using addition or subtraction. We learn one tiny piece of problem solving each day. This is not only fun for the students, but it also allows me to change the problem slightly to make it harder or easier for the students, depending on what they need.

We ended our day with Mrs. Cheuk returning to us! (The first grade teachers all spent the afternoon discussing how we can switch some students around during math to better accommodate their needs.) Mrs. Cheuk worked with us to learn more about balance during science and then helped us earn the privilege of free choice. It was great to see her again!



Books We Read Today:

Llama Llama Red Pajama - Anna Dewdney



Interesting Tidbits From Our Day:

"I noticed that you're in my square. Could you please move into your own square?" (WOO! Learning how to ask and speak kindly to your friends is something we work on every day!)

"Ms. Carlberg can I come over for dinner?"

"How many days until our next Harvest Party? I'm ready for more pumpkin guts!"

I was the bearer of bad news today when I informed the kiddos that it would be an entire year until the next "Harvest Party" (well at least a party like we had in Room F). While this brought many "awwww"'s it was nice to hear that the kiddos had a great time. We continued to discuss harvest today by naming as many foods as we could think of that are being harvested now (or in the fall) and other foods harvested in all of the other seasons. This discussion will lead perfectly to our next upcoming theme- being thankful. We celebrate all of the things we are thankful for in our life throughout the month of November. This is one of my absolute favorite times of the year because hearing all of the things the kiddos are thankful for is one of the most humbling and refreshing experiences. While we are on the topic of harvesting and pumpkins, ask your kiddo to sing the song "Three Short Fat Pumpkins" for you- it will be the highlight of your week!

We continued to work on paring numbers together to make ten and I am happy to report that we have mastered it! I was absolutely awe-struck as I moved around the room today during our game, "Make A Ten"! Not only were all of the our kids on task and playing fair, but I heard and saw so many different problem solving strategies! Problem solving is definitely a type of higher level thinking and is so important yet so hard to teach. I think it's fascinating that our kiddos come up with ways to see if two numbers make ten that I didn't even think of! Next week we start examining the clock and will use our counting on skills with larger numbers.

We read the book, The Candy Shop by Jan Wahl today. This is a very powerful book about a boy who is saving his money to make a trip to the candy store, but finds hateful words written on the sidewalk when he arrives. (Don't worry, the are not any hateful words written or drawn, but it is implied) Noticing that the owner of the store is very upset, he stops what he is doing and cleans up the words from the sidewalk. This sparked a discussion about a few topics: how important it is to be responsible with your words, taking care of others, helping others even if you don't know them very well, how to be assertive in tough situations. On Monday, we will continue this disucssion and talk about how families are not always people that are related to you (the boy in this family wasn't related to the shop owner, but treated her like family.) but often times include those we love. The kids really connected with this book because they all have seen other friends or people they care about hurt.



Books We Read Today:

The Candy Shop - Jan Wahl
10 Fat Turkeys (a hilarious book that rhymes and counts!) Tony Johnston


Interesting Tidbits From Our Day:

"Ms. Carlberg last night I saw you at the big school! (I am a dance team coach and was coaching at the high school the night he saw me.) You had changed your legs into BLACK! How did you do that?! (I was wearing black dance tights...)

"Happy Harvest Everyone!"

We are all back together once again! Last week I was gone Thursday through this Monday (hence no blog posts) and there were many sick kiddos gone as well. We are back and ready to start a new week and mostly get back into our normal routine. Today was a very exciting day because it was our Harvest Party! In order to respect everyone's beliefs and traditions, we celebrate fall harvest instead of Halloween. We spent the day reading books about pumpkins, fall, and harvesting. But the most exciting part of the day (by far!) was doing pumpkin math! We spit into three groups and each group received a pumpkin. (Thank you Abby and her family, as well as my grandpa Jim and grandma Alma for the pumpkins!) With the pumpkin the groups weighed them, measured their circumfrence and height, and then dug out the seeds and counted them! This was gooey, slimey, and so exciting! We talked about how we could all count the seeds and decided that counting them by 10's would be easiest and fastest. We drew circles on our table cloths and dug in to get the seeds out and counted. The cooperation that took place during this was absolutely astounding! The groups were devising plans and systems to digging out seeds. One group decided that they were all just going to squeeze in and dig. Another group decided that they would take turns going around the table. The last group decided that they would pass the spoon to each person and then they could dig. Isn't that incredible! What a great lesson not only in math, but also in cooperation and sharing! We have amazing kiddos! Here are some gooey pictures:

We were going to trek over to the Edible Garden to see if any food was left to be harvested but we ran out of time. We'll try to fit it in tomorrow.

The entire first grade started something new today called I-Time. This is a time where all first graders are divided based on their reading level and then sent to different rooms to work. Some students are working on computers, some at stations, some are working on building vocabulary, and some are working on comprehension. This is absolutely wonderful for a few reasons: the students get a chance to get out of their rooms, they get a chance to meet other first graders, and they are working with students doing activities that are at their academic level. Plus it's fun for the teachers to get to know new students too! THe kiddos really seem excited by this!

Ahh, it's good to back in the "swing of things"

Books We Read Today:

Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams
Five Little Pumpkins (this is a book we'll each bring home)



Interesting Tidbits from our Day

"Ms. Carlberg, we did so great in music! Mr. Rosas said we were role models! I don't think we'll have to practice tomorrow!"

"Could you please move off of my carpet spot?" [This is HUGE because normally this kiddo yells at others, "get out of my way!"]