December is Travel Time in 
           Our Classroom ! 

For this month it is all about learning our featured vocabulary words: tradition and custom. We also get to learn about new countries and what they see and do in other places. What is the same? What is different?  Being able to compare and contrast is a skill needed for reading, writing, science and math!  Our first travel day was to Russia. We made our own Russian"Faberge Egg" with jewels, a puppet about the Russian folktale "Snow Maiden" who flies, a counting book to help count to 10 in Russian and we sampled the yummy blini pancakes while listening to the Russian composer who wrote the Nutcracker. Thanks to all who donated the materials and came in to volunteer during our celebration of different cultures! (Next country will be Mexico later in the year! And we will have several mini- studies of England and China as well. Stay tuned!)
  
Sending postcards from Russia to tell about our travels!

 

Adding jewels is very hard work!

Behold the flying Snow Maiden!

It is pumpkin time!

The first graders have been reading about pumpkins. They have counted the seeds inside their Color Group/Team's pumpkin...grouping seeds in piles of 10. Most were surprised to find out that each pumpkin had more than 200+ seeds!

 

  

Next it was time to see if our pumpkin would "turn into food for the soil" like the book we read aloud called "Pumpkin Circle"from our Great Falls Library. We recorded our observations of our pumpkin just 3 days after we had counted the seeds. It was flat and mushy! Here are a few scientists at work at this last "Pumpkin Investigation."

 

And now we are starting to make new friends and learn about customs of people both near and far! Each week we buddy up with Mr. Choate's 5th grade class to read, investigate or play a math game. Below are a couple of photos of our Big Learning Buddies.

 

Staying in the Math Mind of how to make groups of 10...we taught our Big Buddies how to play the card game"Go Fish   for 10" !!  Next we learned a new way to show how to make a number using "Part Part Total" pictures. Look close to see the number of Pilgrims and the number of Native Americans in each picture students created of the Thanksgiving feast of long ago. Then check out the number when we added all of our pictures together!  

Maine State Ballet, Mystery Trees,Puppets

May Merriment... and Memories!

Learning the song...

The entire first grade went on a field trip to Maine State Ballet where we were treated to some behind the scenes instruction- trying on costumes, learning fun facts about the masks and lighting techniques were just some of the aspects of our visit. Students learned some basic steps of ballet, tap and jazz...and then performed on stage! Even the most skeptical students were heard to comment on how much fun (and hard work) a dance show could be. When they heard the Patriots football player Gronkowski takes dance for coordination it drew a sound of surprise from the crowd...and so did the fun fact of a tutu costing thousands of dollars because they are so complicated and time-consuming to make! They then explained how this ballet company make their own tutus.  Check out some of our classmates dressed in some of their finest!

...learning the dance movements...

...and performing in front of friends.

Eddie the wolf

Grace the Rabbit

Drew the Mouse King from the Nutcracker Ballet

Everyone was very impressed to learn that the masks were made of paper mache...especially since we had made paper mache eggs during our Mexico study!  We were impressed with how smooth they were and how they hard it mus be to dance with them on!

It was a week of show stoppers!  Shadow Puppets with the Kindergarten Audience:  "The Three Billy Goats Gruff"

 

 
Many thanks to our back stage construction crew:  Sam (Ayden's mom) and David (Alex's dad)

 This was our first puppet production- we had 5 different stages so all of the first grade students could have a chance to put on their play for small groups of K students. The noise level proved to be a challenge with everyone putting on five plays at once; so after everyone had a turn we had one focus group perform so there were less distraction for the K student audience. We learned a great deal about shadows, light and working together as a group- and to cut back and just do one show per day! Problem solving was discussed and the last suggestion came from our reflection time in the classroom circle; it is always great to see and hear them talk about team work!

And speaking of teamwork... our science partners finally got a chance to see their mystery tree with LEAVES!
That made it much easier to match information and find out what kind of tree they had been sketching and measuring!
What we found out is most trees we picked behind the school were oak trees while only a few were maple and elm. Here are some work samples of our Super Scientists:

After reading some fact books on trees we matched tree seeds to our trees...and then began to sprout a few sunflower seeds and bean seeds.

Sprouting in our window- look at them grow!

After reading Jack in the Beanstalk, Jim in the Beanstalk, Kate in the Beanstalk as well as Jenny in the Cornstalk...our seeds sprouted! We watched and measured until they were big enough to take home.

As we end the year we find ourselves out and about the pond. On our last walk we saw 3 frogs !

Which leads us to the last few days of school and our last unit of study- POND LIFE !! 

Dates to remember:

June 7   Field day at USM in a.m.
             Sneakers and a LABELED water bottle

                        Book Swap in p.m.
            Bring in a book you're done with and trade !
 
June 9  Family Picnic, Trail Walk
              5:30-6:30  Bring a picnic and tick spray

June 10  Wear P.J. "Frog Prince/Princess Movie Day"
              
                  Kids wanted a PJ to School Day; and me being me I told them they had to earn it by
earning weekly points for good behavior, taking care of tools correctly and using inside voices. They have accomplished this for a week- so we will spend this Friday in our PJ's. We will also be reading different versions of the Frog Prince Folktale-and comparing it to the movie. 

It is "Pretend Summer Birthday Day" as well. This is a day where the summer birthdays (that did not occur during school) get to receive their birthday crown/ pencil from yours truly.

Benchmark student work samples from beginning of the year until now will be sent home in a large bag. 


June 13  Step Up Day in a.m.
                         Meet teacher for next year- come back to the room and "write a letter to her telling what you 
                         feel she should know about you...and what questions you may have about second grade."

                         Memories
               After reading "Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge" (about a little boy who helps someone    
                            who has lost their memories) we will share ONE special item that brings back a great  
                            memory. We will also write a small book of our own memories. Mrs. Lesperance 
                            will give out her memory gift bag to each student on this day as well.

                         End of the Year Assembly
                This is an assembly for grades K-5 to get together one last time to sing together, watch  
                              slide shows of the year together and honor those with great attendance. We also get our
                              final report card  to bring home.

June 14   Last Day   Half Day  Dismissed at Noon

I would like to thank all of you for the support this year, as well as having the honor to watch your child grow and become such strong students. Have a great summer full of reading, adventures and sunshine!   - Michelle

                  

   
                        








 
 
             
                

April News

April is poetry month...but the weather did NOT seem to follow our poem April Showers Bring May Flowers!

So...instead of rain we started April with snow! But no matter what the weather, we are continuing to study shadows and working on our shadow puppet show: The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We will show this in May to the K classes we have yet to visit this year. And speaking of visiting, we were guests to Ms. McCallister's 4th grade class on "Poem in Your Pocket Day" where we shared our poems in pairs. Here are a few kiddos caught up in the poem share about rainforest animals and their animals movements.

  


 

In between the crazy weather we have still made it out to measure our mystery trees. We have looked at bark samples and tried to match these with our tree. Working as partners we are measuring and waiting for some leaf buds! When the leaves finally arrive we will be ready to match them with our leaf samples to name that mystery tree. Here are a few of our budding* scientists at work:
*pun intended

And while we wait for the temperature to reach 75 degrees- we are busy studying the habitats of the rain forest, desert as well as

Writing fact postcards from Mexico

folktales/facts about Mexico. During our last Travel Day- thanks to many parent volunteers- we had our last cultural celebration of the year. Taking our passports we headed down the hall to the sounds of Mexican guitar music and the smell of frying tortillas. Students wrote postcards about what they saw and heard about Mexico, made their own version cascarones (Mexican confetti eggs), put together Spanish counting books with flags of Mexico and made paper poinsettia to accompany the Mexican Folktale about the origin of the poinsettia flower. Many thanks to all parent volunteers who helped with the materials, the set up and the clean up... as well as those who helped out on our big day!

 Counting in Spanish is the easy part! It is making the correct number of Mexican flags to match the number!

"Most Messy Award" went to our cascarones- we used birdseed instead of confetti and covered the eggs in paper mache so they turned out like small pinatas that we broke outside on our mystery trees. Bird food for the birds- while we fried up some corn tortillas and cheese for us. And... figs and hot chocolate too, as they are gifts of the rainforest!
After hearing a folktale from Mexico, everyone began to read more about other stories- both fact and fiction- about habitats in that country as well as fun facts- like the start of basketball or the use of chocolate! 









Both are contributions of our southern neighbors in Mexico. Happy reading and happy discovering to one and all!