Fall Fun and Classroom Community Building Activities 2017

   We started the year reading several versions of "The Three Little Pigs" which included "The Fourth Little Pig" and "The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig"...which led us into discussions about building a sturdy house as well as the benefits of taking your time to produce a quality product! In our room we often work in "Brain Buddy" pairs - because two brains are better than one. Below are a few pictures of buddies building a sturdy house using cardboard triangles and popsicle sticks; the task was that each partner had to show what the other partner did to assure that both folks worked together.

Some added a fence for extra protection !

 

Animal Adaptations Part 1      

                               Our Field Trip to Maine Wildlife Park 

The first graders in Gorham study adaptations throughout the year; especially animal adaptations and their unique ways they adapt to the changing weather. We were treated to a presentation by the park ranger as she explained the various adaptations of Maine animals to their specific habitats.

 

Taking a closer look before we head out to look at live animals and find out more about animal parts.

 

Taking a Closer Look and Recording Observations: Science Skills

In our science notebooks we have several pictures- all students have made a guess as to which they feel "have parts." About half of the class felt a leaf did not have parts..so we went out to collect leaves and draw what we found. In the end, we all felt that leaves do indeed have parts.

 

May- June End of the Year Newsletter

Learning the song "Zippity Doo Dah"

May- June   Dancing our way through !

We were lucky enough to go on another great trip to Maine State Ballet this past week. It is such a wonderful trip as it gives the students a first hand experience of the amount of practice,  work and detail it takes to put on a show.  First, we learned the song ...next a few dance moves... and then we went into the costume room to learn about how costumes are made! 

 

(Fun Facts : It takes about 100 hours to make ONE tutu. Those costume heads are paper mache taped on bike helmets.)

The final portion of the field trip is learning about the set and lights. And...putting on our final show on stage of course!

Pretty impressive accomplishments in just an hour and a half!

April is the time for "Habitats, Cultures, Customs and Celebrations!"

 

We had our last travel day; this time we studied Mexico with it's habitats of deserts and rainforests. Students wrote their first factual report on their favorite desert animal as well as made "serape ponchos" with math pattern blocks to show off Mexican weaving skills! 

 

Everyone had a chance to fry their tortillas to make fresh nachos, Spanish counting books, bird seed filled cascarones and a paper poinsettia to accompany the folktale "The Legend of the Poinsettia." 
 

(Note: Cascarones are like confetti filled mini- pinatas made of empty eggshells. The tradition is to crack them over their heads! We altered that to be bird seed filled and we cracked them against our mystery tree so the birds could enjoy our efforts too.)

 

As usual, we all have to thank our kind parents and grandparents for volunteering their time and donating items for our activities! We could have never put this together without their help. 

 

February- March

February- March     Check out the red phone booth from the U.K. !

What is a phone booth?

   We had the pleasure of a quick pretend visit to England to compare customs, money and learn some useful information about Britain. James' mom was born in the United Kingdom and was kind enough to come in with her official passport as well as some fun facts! Below are a few moments she captured; most were shots of us marveling over her stamp collection as a child. We learned that England had the first stamp and post office- and they also started the tradition of sending postcards. We then made some cards for family and designed our own stamps. Best of all James' mom brought in crackers- a surprise toy that is hidden in a paper "cracker" that you pull apart with a "crackle pop." Out comes a paper crown plus a toy! Everyone felt that was the best custom ever!

Who said it was the same language?

  And now a word from our Big 5th Grade Learning Buddies !
Every Thursday that we can, we get together to play math games, read and sometimes share stories we have written with our 5th grade buddies in Mr. Choate's class. Soon our buddies are going to teach us how to count in Chinese!

 Many students pick this as their favorite time of all. It is great to see the bond that happens over time with these partners.

SNOWFLAKE
INVESTIGATIONS

Science Wonder Investigation:
"Do snowflakes have parts?"

All year long we have asked the question...
 "Does ________have parts?"  

So far we have discovered many things in our science investigations. We have looked closely, using science tools such as magnifying glasses and toothpicks, and then recorded our findings. In September we looked closely and took apart a leaf, in October we repeated a similar investigation and took a pumpkin apart. November we repeated our question and discovered a lot about feathers- and the job of different parts of the feather. So it was only a matter of time before we decided to investigate snowballs and snowflakes after reading "The Snowy Day" and "Sadie and the Snowball." We have also read about "Snowflake Bentley" who was the first person to successfully photograph a single snowflake. Then we made our own snowflakes based on what we learned; enjoy some samples of these on display above. It was so surprising to all of us how many shapes we have studied in math are in each and every snowflake! Nature is the ultimate math wizard and artist extraordinaire.

We have also been reading books about animals who live in the arctic. When we read about polar bears, orca whales and walruses we kept hearing about how "blubber" keeps these animals warm in the icy waters of the north pole. So we tried out how fat can keep our thumb warm in a bucket of ice water- using Crisco.