Painting Symmetry

We have just finished our math unit focusing on geometry (learning about 2D shapes, 3D shapes, and symmetry). Today we finished a very pretty project that combined painting and symmetry to make large, colorful butterflies and dragonflies. Each student started by tracing and cutting either a symmetrical butterfly or dragonfly. They then worked to draw symmetrical markings on each side of their insect in pencil, then trace over them with black marker. Finally we painted! Students chose either warm colors (red, yellow, orange, pink) or cool colors (blue, green, purple, turquoise) to paint their insect and made sure to make the paint markings symmetrical too. We finished by painting backgrounds for mounting the insects in the opposite color scheme used for the insect. The results are very pretty and gave us a chance to play with symmetry! Below are some photos I took during the process.

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Food Drive

As of this school year the Colchester Food Bank has relocated to the old firehouse building next door to UMS and is now neighbor to our school. Throughout the rest of this school year UMS will be doing a non-perishable food drive to benefit the food bank. Each class has been assigned a week to collect donations and our week will be April 2-6. If you are able to donate something please send it in to school with your child that week. The food shelf will greatly appreciate all donations! Below is a list of items the food shelf is currently looking for:

canned fruit
salad dressing
crackers
small bags of sugar
small bags of flour
cooking oil
jello/pudding mix
cake/brownie mix
personal care items-- toothbrushes, shampoo, deodorant, etc
any non-perishable food

Ice Cream Making!

First graders are currently studying solids and liquids in their classes. To have a little fun and experiment with changing states of matter our class made ice cream this afternoon! I have to apologize that there are no photos with this post but teaching 17 children to make ice cream by hand left me otherwise occupied and my camera didn't get a chance to come out! I am sending the directions for our experiment home today, though, so if you would like to re-create it over the weekend you can. With just a couple of kids and an adult it would be very quick and easy! If you try it at home I would love to hear about it or see your photos!

To make our ice cream we mixed ingredients in a quart sized zip-lock bag (milk, evaporated milk, egg, sugar, vanilla), then put that bag into a gallon sized zip-lock bag which was filled with ice and rock salt (the same kind you use on your driveway). We made certain that each bag was sealed so that the contents of each one stayed separate, then we got into small groups and took turns shaking the bags. After about 10 minutes of shaking the milk mixture had frozen and become ice cream! We finished our experiment by tasting the ice cream and talking about what we learned.

During our experiement we watched the changes from liquid, to solid, then back to liquid (as our ice cream started to melt on our plates). We also got a chance to see and discuss condensation as kids began to notice that the outside of our ice bags started feeling damp after several minutes. Ask your child tonight and they should be able to tell you all about it! They should be able to explain the experiment, the change from liquid to solid and back as a result of temperature changes, and tell you that condensation occurs when the air touching the bag of ice changes from a gas back to a liquid because of the temperature! We are learning so much!

New Math Link

Today I discovered a great new website called IXL math and created a link for it under the Math Links tab on the blog. The website allows you to choose a grade level, then choose a math skill to practice, and quiz yourself on it. Kids can complete interactive math problems on all sorts of topics such as money, estimating, greater/less than, adding/subtracting, and much more, then have the computer check their answers and tell them how they did! I have only just begun to explore the site but it looks very well organized, user friendly, and fun to use all while targeting key skills that kids need to master! Another nice feature is that the website provides math problems at all the elementary grade levels, so once kids are ready to move on to a harder level, they are able to! Definitely check this one out under the Math Links tab. It looks like it would provide great math reinforcement at home!

Sweet Search

I just learned about a great new website called Sweetsearch.com! Sweet Search is an internet search engine just for kids and looks like a great, safer way that you can search the internet for information such as our first grade science themes (magnets, the night sky, solids and liquids, weather, chicks)! On the website sweetsearch.com there is a link for "SweetSearch4Me" which provides a search engine more specifically geared toward primary grade students. I have only just begun exploring Sweet Search but it looks great! I created a tab on the blog called Other Links and have put direct links to both SweetSearch and SweetSearch4Me under that tab if you want to check them out.