Gingerbread People - Just how far did they run?

We read The Gingerbread Girl, then made gingerbread people.

We decided to guess how many miles we think they could run! 

Our gingerbread people ran really far!

We put them in order on an open number line.

Left was the least, right was the greatest, and the middle number we put close or far from the next number.

Frog class 

Owl Class

We had to work really hard to decide exactly how far away the numbers would be, and put each number in it's just right place! Talk about creative fun!

Enjoy these gingerbread people!

We are BUSY! Today's run down ...

We started the morning celebrating Computer Science Education Week with the Kodable app. Lots of problem solving went on as we practiced telling the puff balls how and where to roll to collect coins. Play at home by downloading the app here. 

Next we did some more inquiry about how Christmas trees are made, and how they grow. We're collecting data to look at tomorrow! Would you like to add information about your family's tree? Take our survey here - http://goo.gl/RMUAkU  Share it with your family members too!

We would love to have a picture of your Christmas tree to add to our project! 

If you'd like, please email one to Mrs. Zig at msmith@paisd.net

We discussed media more, and worked on understanding the creator's purpose. We picked out books from our library to think about their purpose. Think about the media you have at home, what's the purpose?

We'll share our latest Book Creator App Book about media when we are done!

Then we worked on adding multiple tens to understand place value even better. We loved drawing our thinking and using the 100's chart!

We also opened lots of Holiday Cards from other schools around the country! Come see them along with our great art outside our room!

So, my, oh my are we ever busy! 

: ) Mrs. Zig & Kids

Computer Science Education Week

Today we had so much fun working with many forms of media! To begin celebrating computer science education week, we used this slide show by Mrs. Carlough to learn some key words.

Click here, or the picture to see Mrs. Carlough's great slides!

While we learned and discussed the slides, we pretended to be robots commanded by the programer's (the teacher's) commands. We jumped, clapped, sat and more. It was fabulous!

Then, as proper mathematicians should,  we used the 120 chart to help us with an unplugged coding activity. We made our polar bear erasers move from one number to another, using only 2 moves. The polar bear could move up, down, left or right according to the programmer's commands. The "computer" student was responsible for acting out the commands. 

Here's an example of some of the fun we had!

Don't you just love this! The problem solving is awesome!

We'll be spending some time learning to code each day this week, and I'll be sharing the apps and resources we use.

Happy Computer Science Education Week!

  Mrs. Zig & Kids

What is Media?

What is media? It's something you can watch, read or listen to. Media has a purpose - to entertain you or to inform you.

We're beginning to learn all about media literacy this week.

Please check out our definitions on our KidBlog!

Click here, and remember we love comments!! Each post is titled "Media".

Sending Holiday Cards

We are so excited to be participating in The Holiday Card Exchange this year! The theme is Holiday lights.

We made cards with fingerprint strands of lights, and wrote each message ourselves. Everyone worked so harped to make the 30 cards we needed. 

Today we got to add stamps, return address labels, and inserts with fun facts about our class. Each envelope was stuffed & sealed with care! We have sent them to 30 elementary school classes around the country! We'll get a card from each class in return! 

We got out first card in the mail today, and loved learning about their weather and 2nd grade class. Our first card was from Illinois. They made a fingerprint light card too!

We'll be hanging our cards outside the room for all to see!

Welcome December

Today we started letters to Santa, to be sent by The Jetty. Here is our class letter. Don't worry we have plenty of supplies & pets! I guess I need to put out more markers!

This afternoon we worked on sorting numbers from greatest to least. These are our class projects? Students are going to finish later this week. We used one of our favorite apps - Pic Collage. 

We're looking forward to a fun filled December! 

Happy Thanksgiving & A Busy Week!

Goodness, this week flew by and was packed full of fun!

Wednesday we had our fist Skype call to a class in Seattle, Washington. First we shared some information about Port Aransas, such as our Marlin Mascot, the weather and that we live on an island. Then we shared a book recommendation - The Thankful Book by Todd Parr.

Inspired by the book we each drew and wrote about something we were thankful for. Each student shared their thankful picture. We learned that a lot of Seattle students were thankful for the Seahawks football team, and that we were all thankful for family!

Skyping with our new friends in Seattle. We took turns standing in front of the computer to share what we're thankful for!

Thursday was our field trip to The Nutcracker, and even though we didn't get to stop at the park because of the rain, it was a great time! We loved hearing music that we recognized, and seeing the dancers. Thank you to the parents who were able to join us! It was a special trip, and we can't wait to continue to celebrate the Nutcracker when we get back from our break.

Friday brought the long awaited Farmer 3's Fine Thanksgiving play! Everyone did an AWESOME job, and we were so impressed! Thanks to Mrs. DeMontel for helping with the music and Coach Sheffield for lending us the gym to practice!

We hope you enjoyed our play and got to take some adorable pictures with your little farm animal!

Have a wonderful, and safe Thanksgiving break! Looking forward to seeing you all back on December 1st!

Mrs. Zig

Understanding Place Value

So we started thinking a lot about place value again today, and were figuring out how many ten frames it would take to build some numbers.

Here are a few examples of our thinking -

Listen to our thinking about 37 here ...

listen to ‘all about 37’ on audioBoom

Here's some thinking about 58 ... 

listen to ‘58’ on audioBoom

Have a conversation with your 1st grader about numbers between 1 and 100!

Halloween Poem

Last week we wrote a "repeater" poem - a poem that repeats one phrase over and over. It's a simple poem, that allows students to share what they know and be creative, while writing poetry.

Here's the one we wrote as a class -

Students wrote their own in the writing station afterwards. Please visit our student blogs to read the student poems.

: ) Mrs. Zig & Students


P.S. - We really love getting comments from our readers, and do our best to comment back!

Bats!

We've been reading some really great stories about Bats, as well as informational texts about bats, and using our Mental Images to help us remember the story and interesting facts we learned.

So, the virtual field trip we got to go on Friday was PERFECT for Halloween and to continue our learning.

Here we are in the board room, ready for the event to start. You can tell we're pretty excited.

We learned many new interesting facts about bats, and even got to see several live bats.

Here are Mrs. Zig's notes from the lesson. We later used the notes students had taken, and these notes to record some bat facts.

Here's the chart we made -

Next week, students will be doing independent investigations about bats during stations. Look for some bat facts on their blogs.

Creating Mental Images

This week we began focusing our comprehension study on creating mental images.

Being able to "see" what's happening in your head as you read allows students to have better recall, and make deeper, more meaningful connections to text. The "picture in your head" while you read really helps readers have better over all comprehension.

We read a wonderful story about a little bat named Chiro this week. We made mental images, drew them out on whiteboards, and explained our thinking as we read.

Here's a picture of our thinking stems chart. We use these words to help us discuss our mental images.

And here's our thinking about why our mental images are different.

Here's an interactive collage of our drawings from the very first page of Nightsong, by Ari Berk.


Our mental images helped us learn about echolocation. and picture how little Chiro felt as he got ready to fly through the night!

Want to record your child's thinking for them at home? Use the AudioBoom app. They can share thinking, then come back later and use the audio recording to help them recall what they were thinking.

Our Pumpkin Rotted - Pumpkin Fun

We rotted a pumpkin. Here is a video we made about how we cut it apart.


We predicted how long it would take for our pumpkin to mold before we cut it up. Here's our video predictions.

We also made a snail video. We wanted to see if our snails liked to eat pumpkin. We had a contest to see what they liked. We videoed it with the iPad. This video is called time lapse. It is from all day in our class.

Here is our predictions.

The snails ate the most of the lettuce.



Here's an update on our rotting pumpkin and our snails. It has been 10 days since we started.
There is lots of fuzzy mold on our pumpkin!

We are really enjoying our pumpkins!

October Pumpkin Fun

We've been really enjoying our study of pumpkins.

Here's a quick video to update you on all the pumpkin fun we've been having!


Untitled from Meghan Zigmond on Vimeo.

Tomorrow we will be cutting up our small pie pumpkin. We'll count seeds, see if our snails like to eat the pumpkin, and explore it thoroughly before we seal it up in a jar to watch it rot! Lots of pictures and projects will be coming soon!

Check back soon for our time-lapse video to see if snails like lettuce or pumpkin better!

You can also explore our Pumpkin Diagram and listen to what we have to say about it below. Hover over the microphones, then press play to hear what our students learned about each part of the pumpkin patch.


Happy Fall!
Mrs. Zig's Class

We're Excited To Be Part of the Primary Blogging Community!

Welcome to our class blog Mrs. Hogan's Class, Ms. Smith's Class and Mrs. Melnik's Class! 

This is our school - H. G. Olsen Elementary School. We live in Port Aransas, Texas. It is an island. We live very close to water and the beach. We get to swim, surf, boogie board, fish, kayak, and duck hunt with our families. 

We have 13 students in our class. There are 2 First Grade classes at our school!

It is usually very hot here. Click here to see our weather. Our Fall is usually warm. Winter is cool and it barely ever snows here. 

These are our class pets.

This is Slick. He is a Tiger Salamander. We like to watch him eat crickets. Click here to watch him eat! He is very funny when he eats. The crickets usually jump out of Mrs. Zig's hands!

These are our snails. They are very cute. They had babies. We have lots of little snails in our tank now. We feed our snails lettuce and spinach. They crawl all over, even on the roof of their tank!

We are so excited to blog with you! 

Mrs. Zig's Class

Time Schema

Last week we got our brains started thinking about clocks and time.

We used one of our favorite apps - Popplet Lite to make a thinking map for each class.

Here they are -

What else would you add?

Noun Movie

We've been enjoying some noun task cards in stations the past few weeks! We've been wanting to share this video we made together.

We hope you enjoy it!



We used ChatterPix Kids to make this cool video.

If you would like to do some of our noun app-tivities at home on your iPad, click here to download the task cards.

In Fall We ...

Here are some things we think about fall ...

Here is a time lapse video we watched.