Sterling's Snippets: Mystery Packages Excite and Engage!

Wow! There has been a lot of excitement happening in first grade lately. I'll try to document the events briefly with lots of photos as I know you would much rather see your amazing kiddos than listen to me blabber on! We visited the Creative Art Studio located in the Plains Art Museum recently. Did you know that the museum is now open to the public, for free? Visit plainsart.org to learn more! Your first grader can lead you on a guided tour following their visit, so check it out!

Each year students at Fargo Public Schools visit the Creative Art Studio to create a keepsake piece of art. This year students were instructed in making clay penguins. They did a great job following directions and made amazing pieces of art! I hope you all received your action snapshot via Seesaw!

After filling our class incentive Gum Ball Machine we celebrated with a Board Game Day! Never underestimate the power of classic board games. With minimal teacher support and instruction, students were able to collaborate, communicate, and have fun playing games. Honestly, we could have played games all day, but an hour was all we had. Until the next celebration...

We also spent the week Ringing the Bell for the Salvation Army. These firsties were sure cute. I sent you individual photos via Seesaw, but these are too cute not to share! Thanks for sending spare change with your students. Mr. Cromwell's class will ring the bell for one final week December 11-15.

Hip-Hip Hooray for Birthdays! We celebrated two birthdays last week. Happy 1/2 Birthday Leah and Happy Birthday Odi!

Meet Roman!

We had a great time getting to know the one and only Roman. Roman is such a beam of joy in first grade, and he is also really good at sports! The kids were especially excited to see Roman's Rubix Cube on his share day!

Meet Xander!

This week we spent some time getting to know Xander a bit more. Xander is so sweet and kind to his classmates. We learned that Xander plays the drums. We can't wait to see Xander play in a band someday.

A Peek At Our Week

Reading: In reading students will be reading At Home in the Ocean, a nonfiction text where students will practice utilizing text features to comprehend. Students will practice reading and spelling with the digraph /th/ in the initial and final position of words. We will begin a new spelling practice in first grade this week too. Students will learn how to "sort" words into categories. More information about spelling will come home in January.

Math: We are busy learning about two dimensional and three dimensional shapes in math. We utilized body gestures to remember the differences between sides, faces, edges, and vertices. Students practiced sorting shapes by playing "What's My Rule" to identify similarities and differences between shapes. We will take our geometry unit test on Tuesday and then begin learning about measurement and data.

Writing: Students will be recording themselves reading their latest published pieces of writing this week to incorporate technology into the process. We will begin learning about opinion writing for our next unit of study.

Social Studies: We have been having a blast learning about holidays around the world with our pal, Scott. So far we have received packages from France, Uganda, Italy, Germany, and Mexico. The weeks leading to winter break can be challenging. Thankfully this unit is so exciting and engaging that the students haven't had time to think about the holiday break. I'll post a video slideshow of the fun unit at its completion. We still have 9 more boxes scheduled to arrive!