Celebrate Doggy Day!

Our class recently did some research about holidays:  Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year, and Earth Day.  For a final activity, each 1st grade class created our own new holiday.  Our class decided on Doggy Day to celebrate dogs for all the love and help they give people.  We came up with symbols and special events that people could participate in.  And today all the 1st grade classes got together and had a holiday parade to share our holiday creations with the rest of the school.  We carried a banner to show some of the most important ideas about what dogs do for us and what we can do for them!  

Dinosaur Museum!

Our class wants to give a big thank you to our PTA for bringing us the Dinosaur George exhibit!  Students could barely contain their excitement that week and after their visit everyone was eager to share things they saw and learned!  Check out these pictures:

Fairy Tale Engineering

Recently we have been focused on fairy tales during reading and engineering time.  I have read aloud some traditional stories like The Three Little Pigs and students have read and listened to other stories.  We also incorporated some fairy tale building challenges that I got for our class through the Donors Choose program.  With each kit students could practice retelling and acting out the story with the character pieces.  They could also try to design a structure to meet that story's challenge.


Trying to build a house big enough for all three little pigs that the wolf cannot blow down:

Trying to build a bridge that goes over the troll that can hold all three billy goats:

Trying to build a chair that can hold even the biggest of the three bears:

We will be continuing to focus on fairy tales in our next engineering challenge!  You can read more about that on in a future post!

Magnet Discovery Lab

Last week we started our unit on magnets with a visit from the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History's magnet lab.  Students rotated to 4 stations to explore how magnets can push and pull on other objects.  We worked on using some science vocabulary to describe what we did.  Take a look at some scientists in action:

2 magnets can repel to push the car.

The washer is attracted to the magnet.

Kingston made magnets float because they repelled each other.

We tested which materials are attracted to magnets.

Magnets can be used to separate materials if some are attracted to magnets and some are not.

Students tested many objects to see were attracted to magnets.

We also used magnets to pull the marble through the mazes.

Are you strong enough to force the magnets together when they repel each other?

Raft Engineers

In a recent science unit, 1st graders were learning about water sources like lakes, rivers, and oceans and about how water moves.  We are now in the middle of a related engineering project - building model rafts!  We investigated some possible materials to see how well (or if) they floated and students are now working to design rafts that meet our size requirements, can float, can carry weight (5 washers), and can stay afloat during rainfall.  Most students have tested their first design and started working to improve it.  

The next part of this project will be some investigation into sails and, again, some materials testing.  Then students will be designing a sail at home that they think will really catch the wind.  When everyone comes to school for our Family STEM Night (5:30 - 7:30 on Thursday, November 19) students will build the sail they designed at home and then test the sail by having boat races!  It will be a fun night for your family to experience the design process together.  All the cardboard creations will be on display that night in the Cardboard Museum, the book fair will be going in the library, and their will be a special TAME Truck out front you can visit for hands-on activities!  Mark the date on your calendars! We hope to see everyone there!

You've Heard of Bedtime Stories, Now Try Bedtime Math!

Students have a new app on their iPads called Bedtime Math.  Every day there is a short article and picture about a topic kids are interested in (animals, weird things, cool things someone made, sports, and more!). You just read the paragraph with your kids and then click a button for a math question.  There are 3 levels of questions and after you talk with your child and they try to solve it, just click the answer button.

Here's an article about prairie dogs.

This is a question at the middle level from a different article.

This is not something you need to do every night (but you could since there is a new article every day!) But if you are looking for a way to talk about math at home, this is a nice tool.  I hope you find it useful, educational, and fun!

Cardboard Creations!

On Friday students across Cannon showed what they can do with a bunch of cardboard boxes.  In our class we had Ryan's robot, Jovan's racetrack, Ava Grace's cash register, Yelysey's elephant book shelf, Carson's weight lifting equipment, and Landon's rocket!  We went on a gallery walk around the school and saw many other cool creations by students in other classes.  It is always great to see how many very different ideas the kids can come up with!  Thanks to all of those who participated!  Your creations will be on display in November in the Cardboard Museum at our Family STEM Night.  (Then you can take them home.)