Grade One Snapshots: Five For Friday- Manyoni, Estimation, and Magic Sand

It's Friday!! (No wait, it's Saturday, but I started writing this post on Friday!). Anyway, I'm happy to be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five For Friday Linky. Here's what I've been up to this week!

Our interactive read-aloud this week was "Where are You Going, Manyoni?" On Day One I read the book aloud and we discussed some of the unfamiliar words used for the landscape and plants. We also discussed the similarities and differences between Manyoni's school and ours.

On Day Two we discussed some of the "fancy" English vocabulary before re-reading the book.

On Day Three, we re-read the book, and recorded a chart listing all of the different places that Manyoni went, starting at home and finishing at school. The students each chose one to illustrate and cut out of paper. Some students worked together to create their area. Then we got together and created a large (as big as a bulletin board) map of Manyoni's path. I can't even express to you how "magical" this activity was. The students were so engaged and so excited about this collaborative project.

I think that the final result is so beautiful. The students labeled the different areas on pocket chart poem paper and then glued them on to match the areas. Each child also drew an arrow on a small piece of paper and glued them to show the path that Manyoni took. (The actual geographic relationship between the places on her path is made up by us because there isn't a map in the book, but the students didn't mind or even notice).

We also did a whole class and a pair-share talk about how we are like Manyoni. Then the students wrote about it in their journals. Some of the ideas we came up with were:

-I am like Manyoni because I like the morning too.

-I am like Manyoni because I walk to school too.

-I am like Manyoni because I eat porridge for breakfast sometimes.

-I am like Manyoni because I get to walk alone.

-I am like Manyoni because I get to school early.

-I am like Manyoni because I like my teacher.

--I am like Manyoni because I get to play with my friends at school.

I love doing surveys as part of our morning meeting time. The students enjoy being able to express their opinions and of course using the smart board is always inviting. In regards to this particular survey, I wanted to know which poems my students like the most out of the ones we had done that week or so. We are using poems from Hello Literacy and they are PERFECT for my kiddos. They are short four-line poems and my students are soaking them up and so eager to read them aloud. I have put them into my students' home-school communication BEE books so that they can read them at home, and we keep the small coordinating printing books in our book boxes so that we can read them during Daily Five and bring them out for printing time. This is one of my favorite purchases I've made lately.

The kiddos love this magic sand center. One of my little ones uses it as a calming strategy. If you haven't tried this out, it's so relaxing!

We were doing estimating this week, and then we counted the items using ten frames.

How cute is this snowman chalk drawing my little girl made? We only had snow for one or two days here this winter, so she has to make snowmen in a different way.

And I just thought it was adorable how my son was engrossed in his Scholastic flyer while we were driving. Rest assured, I wasn't in the driver's seat :)