First Grade blog

This week in first grade we did a lot of sharing. Whether it was during morning meeting or about what animals are in our family, first graders are full of sharing as a classroom community. We enjoyed celebrating Toby and Ethan’s birthday.

This week in Science we read a National Geographic book “A Tree For All Seasons.”  In the book we learned what happens in each season to a maple tree and the animals in the environment. We observed how trees change and why, and learned that even leaves have veins!

In Writing, we worked on our small moments stories making sure we were zooming into a moment that has already happened. We focused on making sure our story had who, what, where, when and why and and used our heart maps and folders for inspiration of what to write about.

In Math, we have begun working on number combinations by talking about what two numbers make another number.  For example, 6 and 3 is 9. 10 and 9 is 19. We used unifix cubes in order to see and count.  Next week we will begin working on number bonds.

As a class, we finished our leaf pattern paintings.  To make them, we went through the planning process by using white boards to create patterns and then made the different patterns on a leaf outline.  Next, we traced our work with black flair pens and erased the pencil marks.  Then we painted the background with watercolors to contrast our leaves.

This week has also been a week of puzzles.  We have been learning how to work together when making puzzles and how to plan when we are putting a puzzle together.

In Tefilah, we started learning the Amidah. The Amidah has 19 parts and we are going to learn all of them. Our first graders are definitely up to the challenge!  During this prayer we need to stand, by standing we show respect (kavod) to God. This week we learned the introduction to the Amidah, “Adonai Sefatai Tiftach” where we ask God to open our lips and mouth in meaningful prayer.

In parasha (the weekly Torah portion), we learned about the story of bereshit (creation), focusing on what God created on each day of the week.  We did a special project where we each made our own books about B’riat Ha’olam (the creation of the world) – it was so exciting!

Enjoy the photos from the week, along with a few from last week when Carolyn came into the room to read and do emotion drawings with us.  With the holidays there wasn’t enough space for everything!

We also wanted to share our first grade email address.

Shabbat Shalom!

 firstgrade2019@hannahsenesh.org