Today we took advantage of the one sunny hour and let the butterflies loose! It was fun to get to hold our little creatures and watch them start to explore the outside world of flowers and grass. We hope they survive the Colorado spring and we're hoping to see them out and about tomorrow.
We have a lot of May babies! So, we've combined a lot of secret reader/birthday celebrations and it's been a blast!
In other news, butterflies are the best. We'll be sad to see them go next week. Did you know we only have 13 days left in first grade? Yikes! Here's a sneak peek of an art project coming soon in an end of year project. This is all you get to see right now...but be ready for something FABULOUS in the coming weeks. Be warned, you should be excited!
We don't actually have butterflies loose in first grade, but we think it would be really cool if we did! Today we discovered our very first butterfly in the net. We took some time to observe the beautiful creature, get very excited, make some artwork, and ask some BIG questions. How long will we keep the butterflies? What species are they? Will they all come out of their chrysalises? How long will they live when we put them outside? Do they have enough space? Will they all get along? What do they eat? How long does it take to break out of a chrysalis? If you would like to create your own butterfly on a flower check out Art Hub for Kids! We love how there's always a grown up and a kid drawing. It helps up remember that everyone's artwork will look different and that's A-OK! VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE! Today we had a special guest! Will's mom, Miss Robin, came to teach us a little about our anatomy. We learned specifically about the bones and muscles and how they work together to help us move and stay active and happy. Here we are practicing flexion (bend) and extension (straighten). We also learned the difference between abduction (move away from the body) and adduction (bring closer the body). Sometimes you might see athletes with tape on their joints. This special tape helps to provide some extra support and make sure that the muscles and bones are tracking the right way. We were each lucky enough to get a little tape on our knees, elbows, feet, shoulders, or wrists. We even got to take a look a few X-Rays! Do you notice the rods and screws in these poor patients spine and femur? We hope we never have to have these surgeries! But if we do we have great physical therapists like Robin to help us with the rehab back to normal active Aspen life!
We've come full circle in writing and we're so excited to share some of our writing with you. Our small moment or personal narrative stories are about one thousand times more detailed, organized, legible, and amazing than they were at the beginning of the year. We spent the week talking about adding our senses into our writing through the words, descriptions, and pictures. We are now experts at the simile and we are way too cool for the word fun. Pictures with thought labels, pictures with a hundred moguls, pictures of pitch black laser tag! Instead of a fun week, we hope you have a: SUPER, FABULOUS, AMAZING, SPECTACULAR, WONDERFUL, TERRIFIC, MEMORABLE week filled with lots of details and juicy words!
We observed, questioned, wondered, and now we're just crossing our fingers that we have some butterflies by Monday! Maybe these mysterious chrysalises will bring butterflies as soft as silk.
With warmer weather and view like this, it's time to bring the classroom outside! And of course take some time for first grade bonding and silliness!
A long time ago we started making maps. And then a lot of first grade happened and we took a break for a while :) But we're back at it! Over the past few days we broke up into groups and explored the school from top to bottom and side to side. We worked in teams to create detailed maps, while we tried to remember where everything went and figured out how to spell different teachers' names. We made legends to show our thinking and label this maze of a school. It was challenging to work with a group of six to accomplish this, but we figured out how to talk to each other and compromise to get it done. A valuable lesson for sure! Here's the upstairs floor of the elementary school. Here's the downstairs floor of the elementary school. Here's the outside big and little playgrounds at the elementary school. Look at this awesome TEAMWORK! We've been working hard to earn another marble party and we finally did it! It took lots of practice, lots of reminders, and a lot of patience to get there, but we broke through the spring fever and we've got the coolest pajamas to show for it! In a little more serious news, we are celebrating parents day this weekend. We worked on a little something coming home in your Friday Folder this week. You should probably be excited.
Yep! You read that right. Did you know you can represent the entire butterfly life cycle in pasta? Here's how we did it. Pearl couscous to show the egg stage. Rotini to show the caterpillar stage. Shells to show the chrysalis stage. Bow ties, of course, to show the butterfly stage. In other news, we think we will see butterflies next week. Did you know the chrysalis shakes violently when forming it's chrysalis. It's nerve wracking at first, but they are really just getting stronger. And we certainly want strong butterflies! |
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May 2023
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