Fractions and Soup From a Stone

Fractions in first grade has been daunting to me.  I think the issue is more of the math program we use than anything.  Our district uses Math Expressions and I actually do like it but sometimes I feel like it skips chunks or doesn't give enough lessons in one area... fractions being one of them.  This year I have thrown in a few of my own extras in hopes the kids would "get it".  My track mate across the hall did a fun activity with pizza {which I am going to to a follow up lesson with next week} and I did an activity with ICE CREAM!  We all love ice cream... what better way to do fractions. {Another GREAT lesson/template I found over on Pinterest.}

The kiddos made ice cream sundaes into fourths.  They all picked four different flavors for their scoops of ice cream and had to complete the fraction sentence. 

1/4 of my scoops are chocolate.  1/4 of my scoops are mint chip.  1/4 of my scoops are strawberry.  1/4 of my scoops are rocky road. 

We have also been reading and writing fairy tales.  The writing is still going in full force.  I am way excited about how much they are writing and putting into their stories.  Next week after we publish the fairy tales, we are having a couple Kindergarten classrooms come and be our audience.  My first graders will read their stories out loud.  They did this last year, and the group I have now remember hearing the fairy tales read by my students.  Pretty cool! 

I spent some time reading different versions of Stone Soup and we ended up making Stone Soup as well.  I sent a letter home to the families asking for donations of vegetables, crushed tomatoes, bullion cubes, and bowls/utensils.  Each person brought in something to add to our soup, just as in the book.  I also added two stones and planned to dish them out when the time came.  The kids were all sorts of excited about discovering a stone in their soup.  One of my lucky kids DID but we had no idea who had the other one.  I started to get worried someone ate it.  Then later on I found out my track mate across the hall accidentally got it in her bowl.  Sorry Kristi!  :)  It was delicious I must say.  The kids actually asked for two and three servings. 

All in all the kids had a great week because I not only was told so from parents during conferences but one of my kiddos was supposed to be working on words and came up with this...

That made my heart happy!