Disney Princesses

My daughter and I just found this great site from Disney.  Each princess has a story that can be read to the kids.  Enjoy!

Happy Mustache Day!

Our Next Skype Experience!

Our next Skype in the classroom experience will be with the NASA Digital Learning Network on April 10th.  As we begin learning about the sky and space, we will chat with a professional from NASA who will help us explore the moon with Wall-E!  Very excited for this experience!

Tweets about Night Zookeeper Skype!

We #skyped with @nightzookeeper & kids started creating some animals and stories on their blogs. pic.twitter.com/kunmNYmErk

— Mrs.Piltz (@MrsPiltzK) March 28, 2014

Mustache Day

Tomorrow our Student Council is having a "Mustache Day" for spirit day.  Feel free to send your kindergartner to school with a mustache, if you'd like them to participate.

Night ZooKeeper

Today we Skyped with the Night ZooKeeper!  We were able to hear one of his stories, and imagine and create our own silly night zoo animals.

 

We Tweeted about some of them @MrsPiltzK.  We also used their website to create our animals, and will be blogging and writing about them soon!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs vs. Pickles to Pittsburgh

We made this Popplet comparing these two stories by Jan Barrett.  Blue boxes are things that are the same, orange boxes are things that are different.

iPads and Headphones

I am so happy to share with you, that through a partnership with the Billings Education Foundation, our classroom will soon become a "21st Century Classroom"! This is part of the Primary Interactive Inquiry Project, which several first grade classrooms in our district are currently participating in.  Our classroom and a kindergarten classroom at Broadwater Elementary will be piloting this program for our grade level. 

Our classroom will soon have 1:1 devices (iPad minis for each student to use in our classroom) and we will have assessment capabilities using our iPads.  This technology, combined with our interactive whiteboard, will make our classroom a truly interactive room where students can learn, explore, create and share. We are very excited!!!!

To give you a better understanding of what our classroom will look like, I encourage you to watch this short video (6 minutes) taken in Mrs. Courtney Niemeyer's first grade classroom at Eagle Cliffs Elementary.  Mrs. Niemeyer's students were the first to engage in this type of experience here in Billings, and the results have been fantastic.  Click here to watch the video of Mrs. Niemeyer's students.

I will continue to communicate with you as the devices arrive and we begin to use them daily.  We hope to have a technology night or afternoon, where we can share with you what we are learning and creating.  Before the iPads arrive, we need two tools to use with them: 1) styluses for writing and drawing and 2) headphones to plug into the devices (no earbuds).  Mrs. McCall has purchased the styluses for our students to use, and many of you already sent headphones to school with your child this fall.  If you have not already sent in a pair of inexpensive headphones, please do at your earliest convenience.  THANK YOU!

Royal Reader

Annalyn was our Royal Reader this week with over 200 minutes on RAZ-Kids!

Skype

We Skyped this morning with our kindergarten buddies from Virginia.  The kids shared their favorite Dr. Seuss stories with each other!

Library Books

Lots of kids were missing library books and didn't get to check out new ones today.  Please look for library books at home, and send them in.  And if they are in their backpacks, remind them to take them out in the morning and turn them in!  :)  Thanks!

Kidblog

Yay!  Loving kids who are posting on Kidblog when they are at home.  Thanks, parents, for encouraging them!  Camryn posted this weekend:

Counting with the Leprechaun

The kids enjoyed this song today!

Royal Reader

Audrey is our first Royal Reader with 138 minutes on Raz-Kids!

Dr. Seuss Program

Dr Seuss Program from Traci Piltz on Vimeo.

Dr. Seuss Program

 

Thank you to everyone who helped their kids practice, who was able to attend, and who helped with treats, set up and clean up.  It was a fun afternoon!

Our Favorite Dr. Seuss Stories

Create your own free photo slideshow

Dr. Seuss Popplets

The students wrote facts we have learned about Dr. Seuss, and then worked in groups to create these Popplets with our iPads and iPod.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Mrs. McCall stopped by to help celebrate St. Patrick's Day!

Dr. Seuss Practice

We got ready for our Dr. Seuss program by practicing and enjoying these adorable treats from Taylee & her mom!  Looking forward to presenting for you tomorrow at 1:15!  :)

Dr. Seuss Facts

We used Popplet on our iPads, along with Reflector app, to collaboratively write Dr. Seuss facts into a Popple.

Living vs. Non-Living

After reading our Lead 21 story about "Living it Up", we did a QR code activity about living vs. non-living things.  Then we created a Popplet with facts we learned about living and non-living things.

Star of the Week

Kidblog

Great job, Audrey, for posting on your blog this weekend!

Also, a huge thanks to the parents who have taken the time to login and comment on posts!  I love it!  The kindergartners have gotten so great about being able to login and begin writing a new post.  Next we will work on reading comments and learning how to respond to them.  :)

Green Eggs & Ham

Photo slideshow customized with Smilebox

Kahoot!

Today we used a neat site called Kahoot! that allowed us to play a game-show style quiz.  This was our first time practicing Kahoot, but they did really well and I'm excited to utilize this tool for other quick assessments.