A "Purrr-fect" week with Pete!

Our first week together has been "purrr-fect"! We've been blessed with an energetic, warm-hearted group of students, and they've been an easy bunch of kids to fall in love with!

But we've had one extra "student" join us this week ... Pete the Cat! This feisty feline has a way of overcoming a challenge by always finding the positive! What an important message for the children to hear as they begin a new school year!

After reading Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, we couldn't resist making our own version! We brainstormed what Pete might step in, and students set to work completing their own page for our class book!

The children really enjoy flipping through our class-made book. They are so proud to see their work!

We also enjoyed reading Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus, because we found a way to sing the song using our names! We focused on using the first sound in our names to make our own silly verses. 

This student's name begins with the letter M, so his bus says "mumpity mump"!

Then we made our own buses, added the first letter of our name, and personalized our poems!

These projects gave Mrs. Beliveau an opportunity to get to know the boys and girls better. She got an extra peek at the children's abilities to follow directions, cut, print and glue, as well as several other work habits, such as perseverance, problem-solving and time management. 

Today was so exciting! As we were reading through Pete the Cat and his Magic Sunglasses, we discovered Pete's glasses were locked in the box! Yikes!

Using teamwork, patience, and our amazing enthusiasm, we collaborated by solving clues to open a letter lock, directional lock, and number lock! 

Ta da! We retrieved the sunglasses from inside the box ... and also earned delicious strawberries and blueberries! 

Ask your child why we got berries!

What a fabulous start to an amazing year!

Pete the Cat Breakout Box activities adapted from here. 

Pete the Cat Roll and Cover dice game from Little Miss Hypothesis.

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes book is inspired by A Classroom on Cloud Nine. 

The Wheels on the Bus names activity is inspired by Deanna Jump's Names Unit: Literacy and Math Fun With Names.

Break into 2018!

Grade 1 students are typically pretty enthusiastic, but today they were so excited they nearly had to be peeled off the ceiling!

Today Mr. Dumont showed up in our room with a delivery! He had a box. A very, very LOCKED box. And a few clues...

Our Grade 1 Breakout Box challenge was about to begin! The goal? Break into the box!

A Breakout Box is similar to a breakout room, but students use curricular skills to break into a box instead of breaking out of a room!

The theme for our box was from Dr. Seuss' book Oh the Places You'll Go!

Clue 1 asked us to examine boarding passes to figure out a 3-digit combination that would open our first lock! We found 3 seat numbers that we put together to make our combination!

Clue 2 was tricky. Using UV lights, we scanned Dr. Seuss' rhyming posters to discover a secret 4-letter word! This was the combination for the letter lock!

To open the directional lock, Clue 3 provided a goofy Dr. Seuss poem with directional words hidden inside!

Hooray! We opened the box!

What!?! Inside the box was a locked pouch, along with with a nonsensical message! 

Using a top-secret letter code, we deciphered the message and were able to make sense of it!

"Oh a place that you should look is near a book!"

We hunted for the key, and opened the inner box!

We did it!  We were rewarded with brand new "clicky" mechanical pencils! 

What better way to start our learning journey in 2018 than to work as a team and have a blast!

This breakout box activity was adapted from BreakoutEdu's Oh the Places You'll Go.