Measurement Trees

Our class has been reading and learning about different holidays that happen in December and we have made a few projects to go along with them. We made hand print menorahs when we learned about Hannukah, poinsettias when we learned about Las Posadas, and today we made Christmas trees using rulers to measure the parts of our trees during math. Last week we made the backgrounds for our trees using crayon resist (drawing snowflakes with white crayon on white paper then watching them appear when we painted over them with blue watercolor paint) and today we used our new skills using rulers to measure strips of green paper to the nearest inch for our tree branches (our recent math unit had a focus on learning to measure). We finished the project by decorating our trees to make them unique! These will go home tomorrow.

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Mapping, Mexico, and Poinsettias

First graders have been learning about maps and globes during our science/social studies time since returning from Thanksgiving break and we will continue with the theme after our December break as well. Our class has been blogging with and following (on Twitter) other first grade and kindergarten classes around the world throughout the school year and we have been using our giant USA and world maps on the wall to record and discuss these other places almost daily. This month we moved on to discussing maps and globes more specifically, learning about the cardinal directions and compass rose, what maps are used for, what the seven continents are, and what the major countries on our specific continent are. After the December break we will learn about map keys, how to read maps, what many of the different types of maps are, and we will create a lapbook full of different maps.

In a few months we will do a focused country study on our neighbor to the south, Mexico, so I am taking the opportunity now, during both the mapping unit and the holiday season, to introduce some things about Mexico! Our class is now familiar with the North America, Canada, the USA, and Mexico on a world map, and we have been learning about a special holiday going on right now in Mexico. Christmas is celebrated in Mexico but, before hand (from December 16-24), Mexicans celebrate the holiday Las Posadas, which celebrates the part of the Christmas story in which Mary and Joseph traveled in search of an Inn for Christmas Eve. Our class has been learning about this holiday (as well as other prominent December holidays) and about the poinsettia, which is a plant that originated in Mexico, blooming there each December. This week I brought a poinsettia to school, we read the book The Legend of the Poinsettia retold by Tomie DePaola, and the students each made a poinsettia art project (now hanging on our bulletin board in the hallway). Here are a few photos of our projects!

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Vermont Symphony Orchestra Percussion Trio

Today we had a special assembly at school because UMS had a visit from part of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra! A percussion trio from the VSO taught us about many different percussion instruments and played several short pieces from around the world using these different instruments! We heard percussion music from Africa, the middle east, China, and South America as well as a piece using percussion instruments we are used to seeing in American marching bands. The performance was great and we learned many interesting things about percussion instruments used around the world!

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Blog Buddies

Students in our class have been blogging for about two months now and are having lots of fun with it! To extend our "real world" application of blogs as a way to have online conversations with other people Ms. Barnett's class and our class have now partnered up so that each student has a blog buddy in the class next door! Students started practicing commenting on posts on their buddy's blog last week and their buddies began commenting on theirs. We will continue teaching students about having online conversations through their blogs at school but students are welcome to continue these at home as well! Students know who their buddy is but, if they need a reminder, just send me a note and I will send you their buddy's name!

Nonfiction, hooray!

We are now into our second trimester of first grade and we are making a shift from studying fiction to studying nonfiction during Readers' Workshop and Writers's Workshop. I always find that first graders are very excited about nonfiction, especially when the texts are about animals, and it is always very fun when we dive into this bend of our instruction. This week we have been reading and writing nonfiction and exploring the differences between nonfiction and fiction. 

As a new shift in instruction (as we work to align instruction with the Common Core State Standards) students are now really being asked to find text based evidence to support their thinking as well as to do research and use outside sources of information to support their writing. Today our class started talking about doing research by using nonfiction books and the kid friendly google search engine Kidrex.org to look up information to use in our nonfiction writing. We also started practicing putting the information we found into our own words. Students in our class had a lot of fun looking up facts about the nonfiction topics they had chosen to write about today! Below are a few photos of them working today.