Zig's Kids

How To ...

2016-04-06T18:34:00.002-07:00

Our incredible writers have come up with some really amazing How To stories!

Here's our class book, published two different ways ...

If you have an iPad at home, you can also download our book on the iBooks store! Click here to download the book we made with Book Creator App.

Please check out the amazing stories published by each student ...

Kassidy

Kylie

Cash

Teagan

Emma

Blu

Christopher

Madeline

Brynley

Kinley

Gavin

Tyler

Ryan

D'Anna

Colibri

Kyllian

Thankfulness & Turkey Fact Fun

2015-11-20T10:55:00.002-08:00

We are so thankful for the wonderful week that we've had! Here's a rundown of lots of our great fun ...

Last week we made 10 with our fingers & turkey feathers. We practic d making number sentences with more than two numbers. Aren't they all great!

We wrote an original poem about thankfulness together as a class.

You can also see Thanksgiving poems by each student on their blog.

We even made turkey finger puppets!

We read lots of Thanksgiving books!

We made clay pots and inferred what the maker likes by their drawings.

We attended a virtual field trip about turkeys with the Texas Wildlife Association. We learned so much!

Then we used the thumbprint turkey cards we made last week to share turkey facts! Each student made a video using their picture and the app ChatterPix.

Here's the final product! I bet you didn't know that turkeys poop differently if they are boys or girls?! Well, now you do!

Happy Thanksgiving from Mrs. Zig's class!

Turkey Problems

2015-11-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

We've been solving a lot of story problems, and having fun writing our own this week. Check out these really fun story problems by both 1st grade classes. We used Pic Collage to add the turkeys, then told a matching story problem in Book Creator.

You can write problems like this at home too! We LOVE drawing pictures to go with the problems we solve!

Bats! Bats! Bats!

2015-11-02T08:21:00.002-08:00

We've read several bat books, and learned from videos and a virtual field trip too.

Here's a playlist of bat videos that we have either watched together or are using in stations to learn about bats.

Here are some of the things we learned already ...

Readers use mental images to help them make meaningful connections, visualize what's happening in a story, and remember information and stories to retell.

Here are some of our fantastic mental images about bats.

Some bats eat other animals. This bat is eating a small frog.

Mental images change as we read different things.

Scientists call bats Chiroptera - which means hand-wing in Greek. Here's a mental image of a scientist calling a bat by its scientific name.

Here's a mental image of what echolocation might look like.

Here's a bat in the night sky getting ready to eat insects!

Want to see more of our mental images and learning about bats? Visit our Kidblog where students post their own thinking! We'd love for you to leave us a comment with your thoughts!

Pumpkin Exploration

2015-10-29T08:23:00.002-07:00

Oh my have we been busy learning about and exploring pumpkins in the past few weeks!

We recorded new and old pumpkin schema.

Then we carved virtual pumpkins and made them talk telling a pumpkin fact we learned. Watch them all here -

We watched interesting pumpkin videos and learned from them too. Click on the ThingLink to watch them.

We used our mental images to illustrate a pumpkin poem called "Have You Ever Seen A Pumpkin" and made it into a video.

We also made an interactive poem on our bulletin board outside our room.

Look at our beautiful pumpkins too! We mixed orange, brown, yellow and green to paint them. Then cut the paper and put the collage pumpkin together.

We even cut apart a pumpkin and now we're watching it rot in a jar. This video will show you our entire process! It was so cool! We even counted 418 seeds!

Our pumpkin is rotting now. Here it is after 10 days in the sealed jar!

Look at all that white bread mold!

We've moved on to using our mental images to learn about bats now. Look for a post about our bat fun soon!

Mrs. Zig's Class on the iBooks Store

2015-10-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Zigmond's Class is on the iBooks Store! Click here to visit our books.

One of our favorite apps to use is the Book Creator App. We can draw, write, add pictures and voice recordings and now even create comics! This is the tool we use to create our iBooks.

We usually save our books two ways - as a book and as a video. You can always see our videos on our YouTube channel.

Creating books with the Book Creator App

We have written several books already this year. We will write about many different topics this year, but so far we've written a few social stories. Social Stories are books about social situations, like being kind to friends and much more. We have a special playlist for our Social Stories on YouTube. These are also the stories that are published in book form in iBooks. If you have an iPad you can download them for free.

Here are two social stories we have written this year -

Watch - Keeping Your Hands To Yourself

Download the iBook here.

Watch - Kindness Is ...

Download the iBook here.

Look for more great books from 1st grade as the year goes on!

Global Read Aloud

2015-10-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

We are so excited to be a part of the Global Read Aloud this year!

We're reading a book by Amy Krouse Roaenthal each week for 6 weeks. We'll be tweeting our thoughts and answering questions with other classes on Twitter.

We started by reading Spoon, then tweeted our friends in Massachusets. Mrs. LaRocco's class read Spoon before the first GRA book, Chopsticks, too!

Here are our thoughts after reading the book.

Then, we read Chopsticks.

We loved both Amy Krouse Rosenthal books!

This last week we read Duck! Rabbit! and Tweeted our thoughts with our friends.

We even took two surveys (one before and after our reading) about our thoughts on if it was a duck or a rabbit. Our opinions changed!

You can explore more about Amy Krouse Rosenthal and her books on this ThingLink.

This coming week we'll read It's Not Fair!

Pumpkin Verbs

2015-10-08T14:39:00.001-07:00

We've been studying verbs this week. A verb is the word that tells you what to do. It's the action word.

Here are a bunch of verbs that we came up with for pumpkins. So many actions for a pumpkin.

Each first grader drew a picture of a pumpkin verb on one of our favorite iPad drawing tools - Paper by 53.

They typed a sentence and posted their picture to their Kidblog. Be sure to check them out here! Remember we love comments!

Here's a pic collage of our pumpkin verbs -

Composing & Decomposing Number

2015-10-06T09:29:00.002-07:00

We've been working really hard to compose and decompose numbers within 10 in the last few weeks.

Decomposing is subtraction - taking away some to leave just part.

Composing is addition - combining 2 parts to make a whole.

We've also been working to find all the different ways to make a number. Here's our chart of ways to 6 where we combine two numbers to make 6.

We've also been working hard to tell and solve story problems (both composing and decomposing). Mathematicians draw quick pictures (not like artists do) to solve. Then they write a number sentence.

We've been using our strategies like Doubles Facts (5+5=10) to quickly solve problems like:
10 pumpkins were on the porch.
5 pumpkins rotted.
How many pumpkins are left?

Mathematicians would quickly know the answer it 5 because 5+5=10!

Here are some examples.

Have your amazing mathematician tell you a story problem to solve, or tell them one and have them draw and write the answer!

This week we're working on telling time to the hour & learning the parts of a clock. We'll be solving some story problems about time too! Look for a post on Time soon.

Sharing Our O.R.E.O. Fun! Finally!!!

2015-10-04T18:12:00.002-07:00

Thank you for patiently waiting for this OREO fun post! We've worked hard to get our projects published to share with you!

Stacking Oreos and sculpting with the cream was a bundle of fun and educational at the same time! We collected data, compared numbers, averaged our stacks and looked at data from other classes around the world!

Click here to see the official results page for the O.R.E.O. Project.

We also want to sincerely thank the community members and families that donated Oreos and other items for the project! We couldn't have done it without you!

Check out this Oreo Highlights video we made with Shadow Puppet EDU, an iPad app that lets you turn pictures into a neat video.

To find out more about our data and discover how high each stack was, watch this video. You'll even find out each class' average!

We made the video with Book Creator. If you have an iPad at home, you can download the file here. You'll be able to read our eBook on your iPad in iBooks just like we do!

Welcome Blogging Friends!

2015-09-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

We are so excited to meet our blogging buddies! Thanks for blogging and commenting with us!

We go to H. G. Olsen Elementary school in Port Aransas, Texas. We live on an island next to the beach and the water. See us on Google Maps here.

It is hot here a lot! It doesn't get very cold in the winter. We have a lot of wind though.

Outside of school we like to ...

Play football, soccer, baseball, and go swimming.

We love playing with our pets.

Go to the beach to play and dig in the sand.

We love running.

Go camping.

Climb trees.

At school ...

We LOVE to read books.

We have station time.

We love all our animals. We have toad tadpoles, a tiger salamander and Texas Land Snails.

We love writer's workshop! We write small moment stories.

We have P. E., music and art.

We also love to make things on our iPads.

We wrote this poem, and made it into a video with our art!

We're wondering if our blogging buddies have class pets too? Do you have stations too? Are your stations the same or different than ours? We would love to know your favorite books!

Dear Families -

We are participating in The Primary Blogging Community. We are excited to blog with 3 other first grade classes this Fall. We'll be learning how to write comments on each class and student's blogs. It's a great way to be connected with others and learn about how they learn.

Mrs. Zig and Class

Text To Text Connections: All About Ponds

2015-09-27T14:19:00.002-07:00

Last week we read several books about ponds, and all the critters that live there. We wanted to take special note of how making connections between texts helps us better understand what we read.

We looked really closely at two books - In The Small, Small Pond & Pond Circle.

We wrote down our thinking on T charts ...

We also recorded our thinking on a Venn Diagram. Look at all the things we found that were the same and different. We were EXCELLENT book detectives!

Then, Friday, we read another book about ponds. This one was a book of poems, and we loved noticing things that were the same as the other books we read this week. Here's a Pic Collage (one of our favorite apps to create with) of our thinking.

We even got to watch our tree frog tadpole change into a frog! It was so neat to watch his tail shrink! We'll enjoy them one more day, Monday, before we set him free to enjoy the fall weather. We still have several toad tadpoles to finish watching!

This coming week we'll begin thinking about Fall. We'll be reading about the season, creating with fall scented playdough, and much more!

We will also be finishing up our O.R.E.O. project with a Skype call to a 1st grade class in Wisconsin! We're really excited to share how our project went and learn about theirs. We'll average our data and get put on the O.R.E.O. project map. Look for lots of pictures and projects very soon!

Thank you for all your support!

Mrs. Zig

Be Brave & Give It A Try

2015-09-20T15:09:00.002-07:00

We spent last week focusing on making connections to books where the characters had to be brave and give something a try.

We read:

The Dot

Everyone Can Learn To Ride A Bicycle

It's Tough To Lose Your Balloon

After reading all our books we wrote and drew some of our thinking about being brave. Here it is on our board.

We also recorded out work into a Book Creator Book. Watch it here ...

We're looking forward to another great week! We hope to be sharing lots of what we're thinking and learning!

Dot Day!

2015-09-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had a wonderful day celebrating being brave, giving it a try and making our mark!

Our water color dots turned out beautifully!

Here's our class dot -

See the book here:

Sing the song here:

Be sure to visit our Kidblog, so you can see your student's dot! You can even comment on it! You don't have to sign in or anything! Just click on your child's post, and type in a comment. I approve all comments from anyone not in our class, so there's no worries about safety! We'd LOVE for our families to be our first commentators!

Dogs, dogs, dogs!

2015-09-10T07:56:00.001-07:00

Last week we practiced metacognition (thinking about your thinking) with stories about dogs.

We read stories ...

and told our own, as well as wrote and drew our thinking.

Then we used our thinking to write a dog poem, and painted fabulous dogs.

Watch this video to hear us read our poem and see everyone's amazing art.

You can also see them in our hall!

A Great Start to 1st Grade

2015-09-07T12:24:00.001-07:00

Where has the time gone? We've already had two very busy weeks in First Grade, and are so excited for what's to come this year!

Here are a just few things that have been going on the past two weeks ...

We drew self portraits to be our Kidblog avatars.
Be sure to check out our Kidblogs here!

We set up some expectations for working with iPads, and many other
parts of our room. We're doing great at choosing kindness and respect.

Our Writer's Workshop is in full swing and we are
excitedly writing and sharing many stories.

Speaking of writing - we've written a lot around our room too! Here's our schedule. Each block represents about how long each activity lasts.

We also used iMovie to record our schedule.

We read, wrote and thought a lot about dogs this week.
They were a perfect way to practice Metacognition (thinking about our thinking).

We even painted wonderful dogs and wrote a poem!

We sure hope you'll join us Tuesday, September 8th from 5:30 - 6:30 for Open House. Come learn more about how Olsen works, discover what we've been up to and where we're heading!

We'd also love for you to check our blog often! It's a great way to keep up with what's going on in our classroom. You'll see examples of how we're working, fantastic projects and also get resources to use with your 1st grader at home.

Mrs. Zig

Creatures of the Sea

2015-05-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

We have had a wonderful last week of school together studying Jacques Cousteau, and creatures of the sea.

Monday we read The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau, and made baking soda dough sea creatures.

Here's some of our sketchnotes on Jacques Cousteau.

Tuesday we read about tropical fish, and created bubble art with rainbow fish. It's just so cool to dip the paper in the tray of colored bubbles and see what happens to the paper. It's beautiful!

Then today we read two amazing books about seahorses. One fiction and one informational.

We created tissue paper sea horses and used sharpies and transparencies to create "camouflage" for them. Aren't they just lovely!

We also shared some interesting seahorse facts through sketchnotes.

What a wonderful way to spend our last week together - reading and creating! I couldn't be more proud of each student for all that they have accomplished this year!

Earth Day - We Love Bugs

2015-04-21T15:08:00.003-07:00

We're celebrating Earth Day (April 22nd) all week! We started with bugs!

We started out reading two wonderful books - Step Gently Out & Some Bugs.

Watch the book trailers for an idea of what we read.

Then we were inspired to write a poem!

We published it with drawings from the Paper app on our iPads. We added the drawings to iMovie and recorded ourselves reading the poem. Then we listened to all the theme music and decided on the best one to fit the mood of our poem.

Here's our published poem!

Several students were also inspired to write their own bug poem!

Kagan's poem

Sybil's poem

Amanda's poem

Keagan's poem

Be sure to visit our student blogs if you'd like to leave a comment for any of these amazing poets!

Tomorrow we continue the celebration with a trip to the Texas Zoo in Victoria!

Butterfly Virtual Field Trip

2015-04-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday as we enjoyed our virtual field trip to learn about Monarch Butterflies we all sat and recorded our thinking as we listened. We traded iPads and also used our Reader's Response journals.

You're going to LOVE some of the creations that were made. The app we used is called Paper by 53.

Use these images to spark your learners memory about what they learned and have a great conversation about the life cycle of a butterfly. Not everyone chose to record in this way, but I'm sharing what I found saved on our camera roll. You can also visit our student blogs to see more thinking about butterflies.

Also - our very own Monarch Caterpillars should be joining both first grade classrooms on Monday!

Gabriel

Keagan

Easton

Emma

Kagan

Chloe

Lexington

Rodrigo

Magnolia

Noah

Mrs. Zig

Jump Class Jump

2015-04-13T18:34:00.001-07:00

We've been working on measurement in math, and today was so beautiful, we decided to get outside and do some frog jumping!

We used chalk and a ruler to measure out a place to jump. Each mark represents 1 foot.

Then everybody got to jump an mark it using initials. It was SO fun! Each student looked to see what foot marker their jump was closest to.

Here's the "Frog" class ...

We made our graph with Haiku Deck, and took pictures. We added some of our thinking in a Pic Collage.

Here's from the "Owl" class.

We made our graph with the Number Frames app, and added our thinking in Pic Collage.

What a great way to spend the afternoon!

How To ...

2015-04-02T16:27:00.001-07:00

How to enjoy 1st grade writing ...

1. Click the ThingLink.

2. Choose a book to read.

3. Smile as you enjoy the story.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as much as you like!

We have been working so hard to share what we are experts at with others through writing. Our How To stories are meant to be clear to the reader, who should be able to follow our directions.

These published stories are just a sampling of what we wrote, and they're amazing! We used a publishing menu of apps. Ask your child what they used to create their video book!

We really hope you enjoy our stories! Be sure to see both versions of our class story - How To Feed A Salamander!

We'll post our work on our Kidblogs too, so be sure to comment there for your amazing writer and their friends!

In the mean time, have a wonderful and relaxing Easter weekend!

Herbs Galore

2015-04-01T13:53:00.001-07:00

Today we all went out to visit our herb garden as a class. Usually we visit in small groups to water and harvest.

Today we made a list of all the herbs available to harvest.

We also smelled and tasted som herbs!

We took a few great class pictures too! Look for them in the paper soon.

Herb orders will be coming home tomorrow. Remember that any change we collect will be donated to charity at the end of the year. Last year 1st grade chose the ARK at UTMSI!

Salamanders!

2015-03-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

Oh the fun we've had with salamanders lately! Have you see our amazing art? We painted paper like Eric Carle, then cut the paper into salamanders, adding googly eyes for extra awesomeness!

Please come see our awesome board!

We've been digging into information text in a very purposeful way as well. We read many salamander books, and watched videos, to help us understand more about them. We're writing a book all about salamanders!

Here's some of our research. We record thinking by drawing and writing. Then we took pictures and added them all here to this ThingLink.

We used the information we learned, and our salamander art to make an amazing informational movie!

Each student used ChatterPix to animate their salamanders. See each individual movie by using the Symbaloo below. We would love for you to leave a comment on our blogs about them!

We've also been working hard to write how to books! We even wrote one about our salamander. Check back soon for more about our salamander how to book, and individual stories!

Fraction Graham Crackers

2015-03-11T18:48:00.001-07:00

We've been working to understand fractions as part of a whole shape.

Here are the charts that both classes made to help us anchor our understandings.

We also had some hands on fun with Graham Crackers! Each student got to break a graham cracker and decide if the pieces were equal or unequal, as well as if it was in halves or fourths if it was equal.

Then we used Skitch to label our pictures, and either Twitter or Kidblog to share our understandings.

Here are our Tweets ...

Click here to see Mrs. Peterson's Class blog posts, and here to see Mrs. Zig's class blog posts.

Please have a safe and restful spring break! Looking forward to seeing all our happy faces back on the 23rd!

Writing Like Mo Willems - We LOVE the Pigeon!

2015-03-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks, we've been studying all the great things Mo Willems does as an author and illustrator. We've read his books, watched videos of him and were inspired by his character, The Pigeon. So, naturally, we wrote Pigeon stories!!

Then we made videos of ourselves reading what we wrote, next to a giant Pigeon! It was tons of fun!

Here's a playlist of the videos. (Each of these videos is unlisted on YouTube - which means you have to have the link to find it. We did this since your child is actually in the video. If you would like the direct link to your child's video(s), email me and I'll send them to you.)

We also posted each video on our KidBlog. Please click here to view your student's post. Remember we LOVE comments!

You can also come by and see our AWESOME, interactive Pigeon display in the hallway.