The Grade 1’s have been exploring multiple activities using the animal characters from the book “One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab: A Counting by Feet Book” by April Pulley Sayre and Jeff Sayre. We have done so many fantastic activities with this book! We started out on this journey by reading the book and talking about how the animals can represent different numbers. We then worked, as a whole class, to see how many different ways there are to make the number ten using the animal feet from the book. We made ten in a lot of different ways! Then students got to work creating their own books. Students chose their number, and then using the characters from the book, they represented their number in as many different ways they could. Students chose a number less than 10, then a number more than 10 to make a booklet. We also played many games and did some problem-solving questions using the animals. There are so many ways to use this fabulous math book! Both the students and Ms. Hutchings learned a lot about numbers throughout this unit!

We try to race to 100. We have to roll a dice and whatever it lands on you have to do the number and then you just give it to another person and they have to roll it too.”

– Grade 1 Student

“I count to 10 by using these animals.”

-Grade 1 Student

If it were an even number we would be able to use more animals but we can only use the snails.”

-Grade 1 Student

“So basically you have to count. It’s basically like money. You have to make ten to have ten by itself (points to a crab). The easier way is to have a spider and then just 2 feet.”

-Grade 1 Student

Since the beginning of the year, we have been reading a new Mo Willem’s book each day. One of the favorite parts of our read alouds has been finding the pigeon hiding in the pictures at the end of every book! Mo Willem’s is a great author that uses humor, familiar characters and lots of sight words to practice our early reading skills! Look for his books at your local library!

Student Voice- Mo Willem’s Books

· “I love finding the pigeon at the end of each book”.

· “It’s funny”.

· “Because I like the pigeon. Because he’s always in the end”.

· “Mostly ‘cause the pigeons in the ending of books”.

· “I like the pigeon book because it’s funny.”

The grade one’s have also been learning literacy centre routines. A lot of our literacy centres are based on the Mo Willem’s books we have been reading. Literacy centres allows students to practice important reading and writing skills. As we build these routines into our daily practice, it allows the teacher to spend time working with individuals and small reading groups. Use the pictures to ask your child about the different activities at each centre.

Student Voice- Literacy Centres

· “It’s fun because we get to play. But like we’re learning but we’re playing at the same time. It’s like if the teacher wants us to learn and play too they give us literacy centres.”

· “We wanted to learn how to spell because some people don’t know how to spell.”

· “Reading. But we don’t even know we’re reading because we’re having fun. Like when we do Read to Self we have to try to read and that’s how we learn to read.”

· “Loose parts because it’s like being a builder. Like of you want to be a construction worker when you’re older.”

· “The centre I’m most excited to go to is where you get to draw your character.”

· “I think we do it fro learning. Like to learn our sight words and especially on the reading ones to learn new words. When we do we learn new words we actually learn our sight words that we do the mornings.”

· “The hide the pom-pom. We hide 5 pom-poms and the people hat aren’t the leaders they have to say the sound and the leader picks up the cup and if they find a pom-pom, they get to keep it. I’m excited because I might get to hide the pom-poms and it might help me to not always help someone.”