We wrapped up 2015 with some fun.  First we played race to Rudolph.  Find a partner. Roll a die. Find the double +1.  First person to 120 wins.  We know our doubles +1 inside out and backwards.

Then we built some wacky snowmen.  We learned to read a grid and pick the different parts of a snowman.  Build the body, face, arms, hat, and scarf.

Finally we did some science!  We discovered the properties of objects that sink and float.  We made predictions about pencils, buttons, water bottles, paper clips, shells, tiles, pennies, and blocks.  We discovered the objects that float are often wood, they have a large surface area, and they are filled with air.  Objects that sink are often metal, have a small surface area, and are filled with water or the water can go right through them!

Thank you all so much for coming to our winter breakfast.  The kids were so excited to have you here and share their calendars with you!  We hope they keep you on track for 2016 :) Unfortunately, the breakfast we so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures.  So...after you left we caught up on our math.  We practiced our math sprints.  These are a favorite of ours.  Right now were adding numbers that have a sum between 11 and 20.  Sometimes we count on and sometimes we rearrange to make a group of 10.

We're ready for you to visit tomorrow!  The last step was doing a little cleaning.  We made if super fun by cleaning the table with shaving cream.  We even got a little math in.  Our white boards looked a little different than usual this afternoon!

We're very excited that you are coming for breakfast on Thursday morning!  We can't wait to share our gifts with you and spend some time with you in the classroom.  Here's another little sneak peak of something we are working on.  See you Thursday at 8am to find out more!

In other news we balanced some math equations today.  We've played this game before trying to get both sides of the equation to equal 10.  Today we played with lots of different sums to make it a little trickier.  We are definitely math wizards!

Today we went cross country skiing.  It was awesome.  Aspen kids are cool.  Enough said!

Things heard while cross country skiing...
"Check me out!"
"This is not going to end well!"
"FACE PLANT"
"This is so fun."
"Why do we have to go back in?"
"POWDER"

...and this Friday was no exception.  We saw our fifth grade buddies.  We heard from the reporter and scientist.  We even had a secret reader!  First grade is jam packed with great things!

Gavin shared a great experiment today!  He wanted to know what would happen if you mix water and oil. ​

We're working on picking just right books.  When we pick book we use the acronym I PICK.  This stands for:  I (I choose my own books), P (purpose, why am I reading this?), I (interest, do I like this?), C (comprehension, do I understand this?), and K (I know most of the words).  Today we worked on picking books that we were interested in, but also are the right level too.  When we know most of the words on the page, it's probably a good book for us!

As you know, we just finished our read aloud Frindle.  Today we made up some of our own words to replace the boring words we use everyday.  We wrote our own definitions and then used the dictionary to figure out where they would go.  There was alphabetizing down to the 8th letter!

We've been hard at work and we can't wait to share our gifts with you next
Thursday, December 17th at 8am.  
Here's a sneak peek of your gift.  You'll have to come to see the rest!

Every week we have new vocabulary words.  It's easier to remember them when we have motions to go along with them.  When we remember them we can use them in our conversations and writing.  Here are some of our favorites.  Ask us which other ones we remember...