We are starting our study of owls! We are already experts, thanks to our outdoor education program with ACES. Now it's time for us to do a little research of our own. We can't wait to share what we find. In the meantime, we kicked off this unit with some owl artwork!
We are spellers. But now that we are writing big nonfiction books, the territory comes with some pretty challenging words. Today we practiced stretching out big word. If we stretch a word out slowly and put a letter for every sound we hear, we can get pretty close to the actual spelling. We practiced big words from our writing topics like Australian, shepherd, race suit, and Star Wars!
Everyday we practice Making Meaning out of books. Lately we're working on wondering. Wondering helps us think about the questions we have. Wondering helps up think about the characters and the plot. Wondering helps us think about the author's purpose.
Today we played a balancing game with subtraction. Given four numbers, we had to make a number sentence with two equal subtraction sentences on either side. For example, if you have 10, 9, 1, and 2. You could say that: 10-2=9-1. We played with lots of different numbers and quickly got the hang of it. In other math news we are wrapping up our current subtraction unit and moving onto measurement for a while! We'll probably be able to tell you how tall we are in paper clips, blocks, and chairs very soon!
Today we heard from the scientist. And she had some very interesting things to share! Hayleigh wanted to know what would happen when you mix baking soda and vinegar. A previous scientist of ours, Tessa, shared a similar experiment on Halloween so we were convinced we knew the results. Turns out we shouldn't jump to conclusions. Here's our scientific method... Question: What happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar in a bottle with a balloon on top? Materials: baking soda, vinegar, funnel, balloon Procedure: Pour vinegar into a bottle. Use a funnel to pour baking soda into a balloon. Place the balloon over the opening of the bottle. Shake in the baking soda. Prepare to be amazed. These were our hypotheses: (a) The mixture will bubble up. (5) (b) The mixture will create Carbon Dioxide. (4) (c) There will be a small explosion. (9) Here's the results: The baking soda and vinegar mix and create gas through a chemical reaction. The gas expands and needs somewhere to go, so they fill up the balloon. It didn't explode, but you could use a lot of baking soda and vinegar if you want to hear a pop. Thanks Hayleigh! We may have to try this one at home!
Yesterday we read two very different but also very good books. Turns out they are written by the same author, Jane Yolen. These books are both fiction, but one is realistic and the other one is not. One is really funny and one is more serious. One is about something we are going to do later this year and one is about dinosaurs, which don't even exist! We just started our nonfiction writing unit and we are so excited to be trying on a different kind of author hat. We've become narrative writing pros and now we are going to become nonfiction writing pros. Here's a sneak peak into what you will learn when you read our books!
Writing is probably the biggest part of first grade. We write stories and nonfiction books. We write about the books we are reading. We write about math problems we are solving. We write all day long! So, today we broke out the handwriting books and started practicing those tricky lowercase letters. For many of us, a big first grade goal is using capital and lowercase letter appropriately in our writing. The beginning of a sentence, names, and proper nouns get capitals and everything else in between is a lowercase. It's tricky stuff because we're still trying to remember where the periods go in the first place!
We're back at it like no time has passed at all! Everyone seems excited to be back and in the classroom. We had a usual busy day today filled with reading, writing, math, and even some computer lab too! We spent some time today writing about our holiday breaks. Christmas, presents, skiing, vacations to warm places, and time with family were very popular topics!
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May 2023
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