Field Day and Authors' Tea

Well, I have finally come to the end of my updates for the end of the year.  It was an amazing school year and it was my pleasure to have these wonderful first graders in my room this year.

One of the ways I wanted to honor all of the hard work and great accomplishment in the area of writing was to host an "Authors' Tea" where the monthly journals, research reports, and stories were displayed and shared with families. Cookies and juice were served to add to the festivities.  Here are a couple of pictures of how the room looked!

Our last PBIS celebration was a field day followed by a sack lunch eaten outside.  How fun!!

Free slideshow design made with Smilebox I hope you have enjoyed the updates and we look forward to seeing you in August!

The Rain Forest and Africa

I am nearing the end of my final updates for the end of the year activities in our classroom.  As we were anticipating the field trip to Niabi Zoo, we took some time to study a couple of habitats that would be represented at the zoo.

We began with the rain forest.  After reading many books, both fiction and nonfiction, students chose an animal to research and write a report on.

We learned the layers of the rain forest through a song and then everyone created a "layers of the rainforest" diagram.

 

Following our study of the rain forest, we began learning about Africa.  Again, we read many books and made some beautiful pictures of the grasslands.  (I'm sorry, but I forgot to take any pictures of these.)  

We spent a lot of time on comprehension, character study, and folk tales through our reading of "Anansi the Spider" stories.  Here are our favorites:

We all loved the antics of this trickster in the Ashanti tales in these retellings.  

My Birthday, Earth Day, Grandparents'/VIP Day, and Mother's Day

My birthday comes in April and I just wanted to share the lovely flowers that were given to me and helped to brighten our classroom.  They definitely added to the feeling of springtime!

While Earth Day has come and gone, I don't think we should ever stop thinking about our wonderful planet and all that it has to offer us if we take care of it.  The following is some of the learning that took place in April as we celebrated this special day.

We learned about the "Three R's" (recycling, reusing, and reducing) as we discussed natural resources and what part each of us has to play.

  Each year I can always depend on at least one kiddo who pipes up in our discussion and says, "we are just kids, what can we do?" This of course, leads perfectly into us brainstorming a list of all of the many, many things we can do every day to help planet earth.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, one of our favorite activities is making words with letters from the topic word.  This time of course we worked with the letters in "Earth Day" to see how many words we could make using just these letters.  The students have so much fun and don't realize all of the actual "learning" that is going on!

Our building decided to celebrate Grandparents'/VIP Day this spring rather than in September when the national day happens. We had a huge turn-out as you can see from the pictures below.  

To prepare for this occasion, the students shared the cute names they call their grandparents, where they live, and special things about them.  We did some writing about why grandparents are so special, and made cards to give them.

Everyone met first thing in the morning in the cafeteria for juice and doughnuts, then it was off to classrooms to spend some time with the kiddos.

Then, it was off to the gym where students performed some songs they had prepared.   

The entire morning was a huge success!

Another special day was of course, Mother's Day.  Students made a booklet for their mothers, wrote about why it is a treat to have their mother (thanks to Tessa at Tales From Outside the Classroom, and even prepared a little "breakfast-in-bed" in a bag.  (This required dad's help to pull it off.)  I want to thank Lisa at Growing Firsties for this idea.

This one is complete with cherries on the top!  (It took some careful cutting to accomplish this!!)

The kiddos had a blast doing this and thought they were so sneaky getting it all arranged with help from another family member like dad, or older brother or sister.

We also spent time learning about some of the upcoming national holidays like Memorial Day, Flag Day, and the Fourth of July.  We used many comprehension activities for these after reading non-fiction text.   

All-in-all we had a very busy couple of months.  Next time, I will catch up on some of the preparation we did for our field trip to the zoo.  Bye, for now!

Learning About the Weather and Welcome to Spring

Hello again everyone! Here is another update for you. 

Each year we move into the spring season with a discussion of weather predicting, weather instruments, and the water cycle.  Also, as we live in the mid-west, we talk a lot about weather safety!  We read many, many books about weather and refer to ourselves as "meteorologists" which is a BIG word for 1st grade kiddos, but they love it!

We begin learning weather words and all about weather instruments.  Next, we delved into the water cycle and created our own versions.  We also watched a Magic School Bus video pertaining to this topic.

Along with this we learned about various types of clouds and how they are used to predict the weather.  We read "The Cloud Book" by Tomie De Paola and then created a visual display of four types of clouds.

We also discussed the term "precipitation" and the various forms.  Then, the kiddos made a diagram.

While discussing severe weather and weather safety I always love to introduce the book, "Thunder Cake" by Patricia Polacco.  If you aren't familiar, it is a story about a grandmother teaching her granddaughter how to make "thunder cake" and in the process she also helps to calm the fears about the approaching storm.  It is also a great book for comparing/contrasting times long ago with today.

We also read many other books about severe weather.   

This led us into the spring season!  We used our five senses to write some spring poems after reading a couple of great books.

We also got out "real" rulers and measured some flowers!

Well, I have tried to cover just a few of the many, many activities we accomplished in learning about the weather and the beginning of a new spring season.  As this has been a long post I will end for now.  Next time I will update you on some special events that took place in April and May.  Bye for now and thanks for sticking with me until the end!