Due to the snow days and missed opportunities to practice, our program is being moved to March 30th. Students will have more time to rehearse lines and learn songs. We will have a dress rehearsal at 8:15 that morning and our official performance will start at 6:00 pm on March 30th. You will receive a letter with more information soon.
Over the past month, I have noticed one of our guinea pigs, Striker, losing weight. I have also noticed a decrease in his activity and social behavior. Yesterday as I cleaned their cage, I had a feeling his end was near. Today, I decided to come check on him and move him to a smaller cage to take to my house to watch more closely. When I came to school, I found him already passed. I know this news may be difficult for some students. I wanted to let you all know in advance so you can talk to them privately at home if you wish. We will talk about this as a class on Tuesday when they return to school.
Thank you to our wonderful parents who donated items and worked to organize this event! We had delicious ice cream sundaes with multiple toppings, festive punch, and minute-to-win-it games. So much fun sharing our love for one another and school friendships. Using only a straw, pick up conversation hearts and transfer them to a cup. How many can you move in one minute? Sashi got 28 hearts in her cup! In one minute, how many hearts can you stack on top of each other? I favorite moment was when Anghus used our STEM vocabulary and asked if it had to be free-standing! Samuel stacked 8 hearts successfully. We also exchanged valentines and made a special present for a special person in our lives.
Thank you for the sweet red hearts we found in their homefun folders. That was very thoughtful and will be kept as a treasure. Mrs. Buffie and I also greatly appreciated our Aubrey's lunch. It is a pleasure to work with your child. I'm sure several students have mentioned the Symbaloo site I shared with them. This is a website I am able to design by adding icons for various sites I would like your child to have access to. Some links will require logins but they should know their passwords at this point in the year. There are sites for phonics, math, grammar, and reading practice. There are game-based and research sites. You could make this site your home page on the family computer or add it to a tablet or iPad as an icon. Go to https://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/dulin to access these collected sites. Our class website, school site, and padlet walls are available as well. Have fun! We have been playing lots of games using our math strategies for solving math facts quickly. We are reviewing doubles facts and also practicing doubles plus 1. Can your child tell you about that strategy? Our goal is to be fluent in addition and subtraction facts through 20. The more they practice the better they will become. The more strategies they have the better. Some of us still rely on our fingers or the numberline. I would like to see more facts memorized and students using the count on, making ten, or doubles plus
What do you think will happen to flowers placed in Coke, orange juice, or the dark? We are studying plant needs this week and looking at flowers placed in different circumstances. We have a flower in water and sunlight but also have one sitting in an empty cup. We are documenting daily observations and making predictions. After several days, the flower in sunlight and water is the largest flower. It is obviously the healthiest flower, but our class is still predicting it will grow. They will learn an important lesson about planted flowers and cut flowers. These flowers do not have roots nurtured in healthy soil. What an important discovery! Today we built terrariums out of empty water bottles. Thank you for your donations making this project possible. We planted rosemary and sage seeds. They are by our classroom window for us to observe. How long will it take for them to sprout? Did we add enough soil? Did we use enough water? After reading about Toad's gardening experience in our story The Garden, I'm glad we know how to help plants grow. Ask your child what Toad did wrong when planting his flowers. More excitement as we continue to help Little Rabbit back to his burrow! We have constructed some great routes, but did we remember all the components it is supposed to incorporate? Does it go up stream? Up and over a log? Does Little Rabbit stop safely in his burrow? We are becoming great engineers and problem solvers as we redesign and improve our plans.
This week, we are reading Little Rabbit's Tale. This story is very much like Chicken Little when he is hit by an acorn. Little Rabbit is hit by a falling apple and believes the sky is falling! He tries to warn his friends and then returns home to his mother. We are working to design escape routes for Little Rabbit to get safely home and warn his friends. Each route must include a hill, a stream, and a log to go up and over. His burrow is that the end of the route! Which team will get Little Rabbit safely home? Which teams will collaborate respectfully? Which teams will be able to defend their designs?
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Dee Dulin1st grade teacher infusing STEM, PBL, and 1:1 mini-ipads CategoriesArchives
December 2017
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