Create Time

Here are some hard-working students during our Friday Create Time.  This week we had some very interesting buildings, vehicles, and creatures!

1st Grade Science

In science we have begun learning about living and nonliving things.  We have talked about 4 main characteristics of living things:  they have basic needs (like air, water, food), they can move or react to changes, they can make new offspring, and they have a cycle of birth, growth, and death.  The surprising thing for the students (and many adults) is that in science when we use the term living to classify things, we include things that were once living or came from living things (like a log, feather, or dead bug).  Nonliving things don't have all of those characteristics (although they may have some).  Nonliving means things that are not alive and never were.  This led to many interesting discussions about fire (nonliving, but does need air and can grow larger) and the sun (nonliving, but can move) and things like a banana (which counts as a living thing because it came from a banana tree).  We put together some pictures of living and nonliving things and students wrote about them on their blogs.  Ask your child to tell you whether some things around your home would be classified as living or nonliving.

We are starting to do research on animals next.  We brainstormed a list of things we might want to find out about animals today and students chose the one they want to learn more about.  We have everything from dogs and cats to cockroaches and the king cobra!  Soon your child should be able to tell you some new things they are learning as we research.  

100th Day of School

Today was the 100th day of 1st grade and there were special activities happening all day!  This morning classes rotated to all the 1st grade teachers.  In my class we were trying to figure out which container had exactly 100 objects inside.  Students worked with partners to put objects into groups and skip count to find the totals.  They also compared their number to 100 and figured out how many more they would have needed or how many extras they had.  Look at all the different counting strategies and arrangements used:

This afternoon we worked on a 100 book challenge.  Our class tried to read 100 books in one afternoon!  We didn't reach 100 books, but that's because we did a lot of partner reading and enjoyed lots of great stories with friends.  Here are some happy readers with their books: