Candy corn guys, pattern blocks, tangrams, and bats

I am going to try and get caught up on what we have been doing.  I am sorry I never posted anything last week.  Sometimes things are just hectic and it's hard to get to everything.  I will try to do better.

We have worked with tangrams and pattern blocks to learn about shapes.  We learned about sides and angles of shapes.  We also used smaller shapes to make larger shapes.

I think everyone enjoyed making different shapes with the tangrams (in the top picture) and with the pattern blocks. Be sure and ask your child about trapezoids, hexagons, pentagons, and quadrilaterals!  We also used the pattern blocks to learn about fractions.  We discovered that two trapezoids make a hexagon, so each trapezoid is one half of a hexagon.  It takes three rhombuses to make a hexagon, so each rhombus is one third of a hexagon.  The hands on learning with manipulatives often makes it easier to understand.









To decorate our hallway for October we also made Candy Corn Guys.  I found this on the internet at ilovedoodlebugs.com and thought they were so cute.  It was also a lesson in following directions. These look really cute hanging in the hall.

The students worked hard on our Candy Corn Guys and I think they turned out cute.  They are a very colorful addition to the hall!








This past week we have been working on retelling a story.  The students listened to Stellaluna and had to tell the important parts of the story.  To make this a little more interesting, we wrote our retelling on a bat cutout.  The class rewrote their retelling on white paper shapes that would fit on the black bat.  They cut everything out, glued the retelling on the bat and then added wiggly eyes.  So cute!  This was based on an idea I saw on The First Grade Parade blog.

I will try to keep you posted about what we are doing and showing some of our work.