Eggs, Eggs, Eggs

What a GREAT day! Honestly, I don't know who had more fun today- the kids or me! I just love watching everyone get so excited to create a little egg masterpiece.

Before dying our eggs, we created a little how-to writing piece to explain the steps of decorating an egg:

Then, it was time to put our steps to the test!

The students created their own little how-to books to take home with their eggs. We decorated little baskets to make sure the eggs would make it home safe and sound.

We also took some time to review adjectives. First the students brainstormed a list of adjectives one might use to describe a decorated egg:

We designed and decorated a paper egg with oil pastels and then chose adjectives to describe the egg we created:

Finally, we made cards to send over the nursing home! These cards are sure to bring on some smiles! :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Enjoy spending time with your families!

Oviparous Animals

Can you guess what an alligator, a turtle, a spiny anteater, a butterfly and a penguin all have in common?



If you guessed that they all lay eggs, you guessed right! This week, we have been learning about OVIPAROUS animals, or animals that lay eggs. There are LOTS of them too- no yolking around! ;)

We began by making predictions about which animals were oviparous, and which were non oviparous. Then, we sorted a few animal pictures to determine which were which:

We also created an interactive writing chart that listed animals we know that lay eggs:

We read a book called Chicks Aren't the Only Ones that taught us about many more oviparous animals. Then, each of us created an oviparous animal book. Here's a few snapshots from some pages:

Try to brainstorm with your first grader even more animals that we didn't think of! Ask them to tell you which two mammals are the only ones that lay eggs too. :)

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

We've been doing a lot of fun activities with kites in hopes that it will bring on Spring! We read books about kites, learned about Ben Franklin's discovery with a kite, did some interacting writing about how to fly kites and even imagined what we would do if we were a kite! I just had to put all these sweet responses onto a poster for everyone to see!

Here's our interactive writing piece we created with the steps telling how to fly a kite:

Today we made our own paper kites and headed out this afternoon to fly them. By the time we were ready to go outside, everyone was just bursting with excitement! The wind wasn't totally cooperating, but we still caught some gusts and had a blast. I encouraged everyone to try out their kites again on a REALLY windy day!

Statue of Liberty

Here are the finished Statue of Liberty pictures I promised!

We are also in the process of doing a science experiment to find out why the Statue is green. Ask your first grader about it! :)

American Symbols

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope everyone is having a great GREEN day!

This week, we finished up our social studies unit on American Symbols. We studied and learned about the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, the flag, and the Liberty Bell. Each student created an All About American Symbols book that will be coming home next week. We also did a few fun activities to display around the classroom.

Here's some students hard at work on their book pages and their directed drawings of Lady Liberty:

I realized I didn't snap any pictures of the finished Statues all colored and cut with the students' writing about what they learned attached. I'll be sure to get some this week and post them!

More Snow??

Hi everyone!

How snows it? Can you believe we had ANOTHER snow day?! I think it is officially time to take the "Let It Snow" sign off my classroom door! I am ready for warm, spring weather- who's with me?

So let's talk about what our busy class has been up to! At the end of last week, each nonfiction book club started a mini project to display all the information they had collected about their topics. The groups worked to develop a poster to highlight new learning, reactions to their reading and key information the group collected during meetings. By using their organizers and response journals, the book clubs were able to create some great posters. Today we finished up and completed our posters. I can't wait to hang them up for everyone to read! Here's a few pictures from last week and today:

Last Week- Getting Started on our Posters:

Today- Almost Done!!:

Tomorrow we will start our new book clubs. The students will get to meet with new group members and learn about another topic of interest.

Just a reminder that our class is visiting the book fair tomorrow. Please remember to send your child in with money if he/she is interested in purchasing books. Click here for more information from an earlier entry I posted during October's book fair. We will follow the same process for this book fair. Thanks!!