Happy Earth Day! Today we talked about how wonderful our earth is and we discussed different ways that we can help our earth every day. We learned about the Three R's, which are recycle, reuse, and reduce. We wrote poems about the earth and we went outside and measured the circumference of different trees. Then we were "trash busters" and we went outside and helped to pick up any paper, etc... We went back to our classroom and had a yummy snack... worms in dirt.
Science
We have been working on our weather unit. We learned all about air, air pressure, air compression, and we made and used parachutes. We also used plastic syringes to do a pushing on air experiment. We had a blast and we learned a lot. Check out our pictures below...
 |
| pushing on air |
 |
| parachute fun |
Once upon a time in Reading and Writing...
We have been having a magical time reading many different versions of Cinderella. We have been taking a trip around the world in a glass slipper! We have read Cinderella stories from France, California, Caribbean, India, Middle East, Korea, China, and Japan and we read a funny version called Seriously Cinderella you are so Annoying!, which is told from the stepmother's point of view. We have been learning about the rising and falling action of a story, story elements of a fairy tale, problem solution, and continuing to work on reading with expression. We have compared/contrasted all of the characters and elements of each Cinderella tale. We discovered that even though the stories are from different countries there are so many similarities. Ask your child to share some with you!
We have been having an enchanting time writing our own versions of a Three Little story. The children did a great job and we are in the process of recording ourselves reading aloud these stories with expression. Stay tuned for a special email with the link!!!
We are now beginning to write our own Cinderella stories. The children decided what the title would be, the setting, good and evil characters, and today we started to write what the good character's problem is. We will continue writing our stories this week and then move into the revision and editing stage next week. They are so creative and it really shows in their writing!
Our class has their very own first grade penpals and we are so excited. I have a friend that teaches in Sea Girt, NJ and we paired our students up and we started writing letters. What a fun way to practice our writing skills.
Special News!!!
The First Grade is participating in a special project through iearn. We sent our teddybear, Liberty to Pakistan last month and we just received the bear from a school in Pakistan. Her name is Daisy and we have been taking her everywhere at school to show her what a typical day in school is for a first grader in America. Everyone will have a chance to take Daisy home with them for one night and then take a picture and write about what they did. We will be skyping with the class in Pakistan and we will also be emailing each other too. I think that the children will enjoy this experience.
Magical Math
We had fun learning all about fractions and comparing fractions. Here is one of the children's favorite activities, which is what fraction of your group can blow a bubble?
We are presently working on our Measurement unit. We learned how to measure using nonstandard unit and in inches. We used rulers to measure various items and we used tape measures to measure circumference. Check out the pictures below of some fun measurement activities.
 |
| Measuring our arm spans! |
 |
| Exploring capacity |
