Our First Snow!

First grade enjoyed their first snowfall of the year at recess this week!  Such delight on our friends faces!

A book about Mexico

In recent classes student have made a book about Mexico, including Día de los Muertos and words they have learned in Spanish. At the same time, we have studied los colores to describe objects around them.  The idea of doing a book about Mexico, Day of the Dead and Spanish, came up during a conversation in one of our classes. It was entirely the students' initiative. In one class, the students came up with words they remember in Spanish, I wrote them up in the board (see photos below).

Celebrating the Holidays!

Emily, Maggie’s mom, came to First Grade to share about how their family celebrates the holiday called Advent. She read a story called Waiting for Christmas by Kathleen Long Bostrom.

Maggie’s favorite page was the one filled with yummy treats decorating a shop window. The first graders seemed to agree and wondered how the special treats would taste!  In the story, the little boy had a long wait until Christmas. He was allowed to eat one special cookie each night until Christmas came, when they finally celebrated the birth of Jesus.

Maggie shared how she celebrates Advent. Her family has a special wreath with 5 candles. They light a candle for the four Sundays of Advent and then light a special one in the middle when Christmas arrives. Another special tradition is the Advent calendar filled with chocolate treats. She and her parents take turns opening a window each day that holds a special chocolate treat. Then Emily shared a treat with first graders. Yum!

If your family has a special way to celebrate a holiday, and you would like to share with our first grade class, please let us know and we can plan for a visit!

Candle and Beaker Experiment

The 1st grade students observed a demonstration experiment last week in science.  They were asked the question; "What happens when you light a candle in a plate full of water and then place a beaker over it?"

Students gave all kinds of predictions such as, "The candle will melt.", "The water will get hot," and my favorite, "It will explode!"  They drew their predictions on their lab sheets first.  Next it was time to do the demonstration.

Imagine their surprise to see what really happened!  So what's the science behind this?

The candle flame heats the air in the beaker, and this hot air expands.  When the flame goes out, the air in the beaker cools down and the cooler air contracts. The cooling air inside of the beaker creates a vacuum.  This imperfect vacuum is created due to the low pressure inside the beaker and the high pressure outside of the beaker.  Most people think the vacuum is sucking the water into the beaker.  The more accurate explanation is that the air is exerting pressure from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. The water therefore is pushed into the beaker from the higher air pressure outside!  Students then drew what really happened on their lab sheets, using words and arrows to highlight what happened.

We Use Objects to Write Poetry

In our next Poetry lesson we began to learn about some different ways to describe objects. We began by naming some objects in the room and here's a few that we came up with:

     The earth is as blue as blue marble (Neil). The smart board is as white as fog (G.K.). The safety box is as red as a rose (Jen). The door is as brown as a bear (Angela). The doors are as squeaky as a toy rubber duck (Matthias). 

We also worked on describing words (adjectives) to describe a variety of different kinds of apples, what they smell, taste and look like. Some of us smelled the apples and some of us tasted them too! We each had our own apple to work with.

We came up with a variety of different words: Sour, sweet, delicious, spicy, great, terrible, yummy, fruity, cold, smooth, rubbery,  crunchy, juicy, roundish, soft, red, green, spotted, bumpy, rough and cinnamon. 

The next day we looked at unusual objects that we hadn't seen before and used our imaginations to come up with playful, sometimes even silly ways to describe them.  A wooden spaghetti measurer was like an "oar with holes" and "Grandpa's fly swatter".  A crystal looked like "whales coming out of the ocean", "sparkly continent rock" and a "rocket rock".

We brainstormed together as a group to start and wrote about 4 different objects in our journals. 

Then we did observational drawings of the objects we had written about!