What a goofy week!

Mason helping us to make change for a
soccer ball that we bought with 7 dimes.

This week has been anything but normal: beautiful weather on Saturday, 17 inches of snow on Wednesday and then a planned no school day for Friday. I don't know about you, but I honestly can't remember ever getting this much heavy, wet snow in one day. WoW!

Well, despite the snow, we have been busy at school. This week in math we have been focusing on fractions and fractional parts in addition to learning how to make change. We have learned how to write fractions using a numerator and a denominator (yep, even used those terms- amazing what 1st graders can do) and that the the bottom number tells how many fair and square pieces there are. We came up with a little rhyme to help us remember that the pieces need to be equal:

When you SHARE-

the pieces need to be FAIR and SQUARE!



Check out a couple of our Fraction Creatures below. Students had to use 12 squares to create their creature and then tell what fractional part was red and what fractional part was blue. We had quite a clever set of creatures.


Evan working on xtramath.org

We also learned how to use the website, http://www.xtramath.org/ today in class. The kiddos were excited to give it a try and they did a fantastic job. It was especially awesome to watch the kiddos who have tried it at home as they have already worked out of the placement tests and are being challenged with a new part of the program called, beat the teacher. 2 of our students did this part of the program and were able to beat the clock and get 11 or 12 problems correct in a row! Cool!

If you've not tried the program at home, I highly encourage you to give it a go. I know a few of you have had trouble getting in, be sure that when you go on the site that you click on the enroll area and put in your child's special code (if you've lost it, let me know and I can resend it to you) Then, when you go to the main screen to login be sure that you have clicked on the green student tab at the top. I hope this helps. I had trouble getting my son in at first as well and had to do a little playing around. Now that we have it figured out, it's extremely easy to manage as Josh's name is automatically there when we logon. This program can also be set up for other children in your family as under the parent area you can change the facts to subtraction, multiplication, and division as well.

If you have any problems, let me know and I'll help you the best I can. Also, please don't hesitate to use the email on the enrollment letter for issues. I've heard that the webmaster is very good about getting back to people in a timely manner.