The First Grade Lunchbox: April 2016

Star Student

One of our favorite activities each week is Star Student. We make these great little booklets that the students get to keep when it's their special week.

On Friday I send home the student's information sheet for the upcoming week. They bring it back in on Monday and I hang up their completed sheet and any pictures they've sent in.

We have our sharing day on Thursday (because we don't have any specials that day). The kids share their sheet, pictures, and anything they have brought in to share. We don't do Show-and-Tell so this is a their time to bring in something special to show the class. When they're all finished I let them call on five people for comments or questions.

At this point we make our Star Student Books. They each fill out page on the Star Student-I have a few different sheets for the students to choose from:
______ is a good friend because, ______ is awesome because or ______ is special because.
For their writing I like to have them write something special and specific about the Star Student, not just "She is nice." While the class is filling out these sheets the Star Student gets to color
their cover sheet.

When it's all done I let the Star Student pick a color for their book cover. I laminate the cover sheet, their information sheet and the back cover. Then I have the whole thing bound and the Star Student gets to take it home as a keepsake.

If you'd like to get the cover and writing sheets head over to my TPT page!

2-D Shapes

This was our first week back from Spring Break and we have been reviewing our 2-D shapes. After they all had a good understanding of the attributes we practiced making our own shapes using toothpicks.

This project used a ton of toothpicks-about 30 per student-so make sure you get the big box.
It also used a ton of glue ;-) which is to be expected!

This was great for the kids to do because it's different than drawing or using pattern blocks. It really challenged them, especially the hexagon.

If you want a copy of the shape labels, click on the picture below. Some of my kids could squeeze in the 2D Shapes header, some couldn't-it really didn't make much of a difference to me.

Next we made Shape Monsters-which they loved! I let each student pick whatever shape they wanted and then they had to trace their shape onto construction paper. They turned out really cute.

After they made their monster they had to write about it. They had to tell me what shape they chose, how many side and corners that shape had, and also give me a real-world example of that shape.

Both of these ideas were from Mrs. Wheeler's page-if you'd like a free copy of the Shape Monster sheet, head over to her blog.

Have a great weekend!

Easter Activities!

One of my favorite books to do at Easter time is The Easter Egg by Jan Brett. Her books are always full of good messages and the pictures are, of course, beautiful. After we read this story I give each student a very large white egg which they get to paint however they choose. I use a 12x18 piece of white construction paper for each egg. They really love this project because they get to use their watercolors which we don'st use all that often.

This is a spider web egg - can you see the cute little spider hiding at the bottom??

After their egg is complete I have them write about their egg. Some students choose to describe the way their egg looks-others like tell me a little story.

They really make a bright, colorful display in the hallway :-)

For a fun Easter math activity we spent an afternoon sorting jelly beans. I used just the old fashioned Brach's jelly beans and filled a little cup for each student. I think it took me 3 bags and I have 23 students. At this point in the year they have done a few activities like this and are used to a format that is similar for our daily calendar math pages (click on the link to grab them for FREE), so they are able to do this fairly independently (silent cheer)!