I hope your Valentine's weekend is filled with family, friends, love, and time spent outside.
We certainly know how to make our friends smile over here in first grade. We were over the moon today when math involved candy...Today we practiced graphing conversation hearts. We've been graphing all year when we check the weather and keep track of how many teeth we've lost. We also go on pencil hunts and graph how many pencils get lost around the classroom each month. But today involved candy...so it was very exciting. How many greens and yellows do you have? How many more pinks that purples? If there are 12 pieces in a serving and 34 servings in the bag, how many pieces in the bag?
Problem: What happens to an eye dropper, partly filled with water, when you place it in a full water bottle and the bottle is squeezed? Procedure: Fill a cup with water. Place Squidy in the cup and squeeze to fill with water so it is barely floating. Fill the big bottle with water. Drop Squidy in the bottle. Squeeze the middle of the bottle, really strong. OBSERVE. Materials: eye dropper (Squidy), water bottle, cup, water Hypothesis: (a) The top of the bottle will shoot off. (6) (b) Squidy will sink. (0) (c) Squidy will swim up and down, up and down. (1) (d) Squidy will float, no matter what you do. (8)
Conclusion: When you squeeze the bottle, Squidy fills with water and becomes heavy. Heavy things sink. When you let go of the bottle, Squidy loses water and becomes light. Light things float. Below, you can see "naked Squidy" to see what's happening inside the eye dropper. For Fun: You can buy your own Squidy if you want to try this at home. You can also make a "naked Squidy" very easily out of an eyedropper and hex nut.
Today we focused on kindness in the classroom and respecting our classmates differences. Differences come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes our friends have different color hair or skin. Sometimes our friends like to wear different kinds of clothes. Sometimes our friends like to play different games on the playground. Regardless it's important to treat all friends with the same respect and kindness that we expect in return. Here's a short movie we watched to help us start to think about kindness in the classroom. Even though this movie is funny, it highlights things that happen at school all the time. For the Birds We thought up some scenarios and figured out how we would react if our friends were making fun of another classmate. Here's what we had to say: Today we wrapped up our All About Owl books. All that's left to do is to stick a cover on them and call them done! We also went to the computer lab to keep working on our Google Presentations. They're looking fabulous. Did you know owls have fringe on the tips of their wings? This helps them fly silently? Did you know that not all owls are nocturnal? The Pygmy owl is diurnal! Did you know that owl's tufts aren't ears? The tufts are just disguises to confuse prey! Did you know that owls live all over the world? You can even find them in the Galapagos!
Today was full of fun, as usual. In reading this morning we practiced making text-to-self connections. We picked the books that interested us and then thought about how they connected to our own lives, memories, and experiences.
Then we heard from the Reporter of the Week! Lily shared a very interesting and current article all about the recent snowfall. We really learned how snow affects our lives! The line to the gondola in Aspen last week stretched all the way to the street. The side country is particularly dangerous with avalanches right now after all the new snowfall. And compared to last year Snowmass has 39 more inches of snow (107 vs. 146). Good thing we had two snow days! Finally, we heard from the Scientist of the Week. Lee taught us how to make a cloud in a bottle. As usual, we made some hypotheses first. We knew you had to mix some materials together so we thought it would have to be either: (a) water and air; (b) oil and air; (c) vinegar and air.
This experiment can be tried at home, but only under adult supervision. Warning: the cap of the bottle FLEW off at high speeds!
We love Valentine's Day over here in first grade. We can't wait to exchange Valentine's in class next Friday and tell out friends how much we love them. However, as much as we love the candy and the chaos, we've also come to appreciate the meaning of Valentine's Day. So, we are practicing the art of compliments again. Over the next few days we are celebrating our friends with compliments. Today we started with David, Malcolm, and Kieron. We're deep into our measurement unit! We've been measuring in centimeter cubes. We know exactly how many centimeter cubes long all of our art supplies are. Today we made the transition over to using rulers. Give us a ruler and we can tell you exactly how long any object in the classroom is! For example, we know that pencils are usually between 16 and 18 centimeters long. All glue sticks are 8 centimeters long. Binders are 34 centimeters long. And are feet are very different...and Miss Kylie does not have the biggest feet in the classroom!
|
QUICK LINKS...Archives
May 2023
|