Math Update

A Family Letter about Unit 5 of Everyday Math was sent home on Friday, and an introduction letter about Dreambox, an online math program, was sent last Thursday. Both are off to a great start! Students are enjoying the base-ten blocks to learn about place value in a hands-on way. We are using dice and dominoes during Math Workshop in a variety of ways to help children build automaticity with math facts. This week, the first graders enjoyed using wipe-off pages with dry-erase markers to practice their facts using dominoes and/or dice. We also play many dice games to practice math facts--has your child used his/her new dice and dice games that were part of our holiday gift? I hope so! It's a fun and valuable way to practice math fact fluency.

As for Dreambox, we are part of a pilot at UMS to try this resource to determine if it's worth investing in a subscription. So far, students seem to love it! It can be accessed at home online via a computer or through a free iPad app. The link for students is on the right-hand sidebar of this blog. I encourage children to get extra practice at home when possible. Our trial period ends February 28th.

In search of...

We have started to work on number scrolls in math.  If you have any paper towel tubes at home that you don't need we could use them at school. Thank you!

D.A.R.E.

Officer Fontaine has now visited our classroom twice for two of our four DARE lessons.  During his first lesson we learned what rules are and why they are important.  Last week we spent time as 'detectives' trying to figure out what items in the pictures were.  This lesson was an introduction to the idea that you never put something into your body if you do not know what it is.

 

Snowmen at Night

Today students began a multi-day project connected to the story, Snowmen at Night.  Students will use a variety of materials (i.e. tempera paint, oil pastels, collage with construction paper, and even glitter) to create their works of art!  This project came from a great blog called:  Deep Space Sparkle.