It's Chick Time!

On Monday first graders began our last, and favorite, science unit of the school year; the life cycle of a chick! We started learning about a chicken's life cycle, the way a chick forms inside the egg, and how to hatch fertilized eggs. Tuesday morning each first grade classroom got a dozen fertilized chicken eggs (from the farm at UVM), learned how to care for them and stay clean/safe around them, and put them in our classroom incubators. For the next 21 days students will take turns turning the eggs in the incubator (the way a mother hen would do in her nest) and learning all about chicks. Around day 21 we will get to have the amazing experience of watching the chicks hatch! We will keep them in a brooding tank in class for a few days where the kids can observe them and then they will move back to the farm at UVM on May 22. Stay tuned for more photos and information!

The eggs in our classroom incubator

Kids will bring this home the day they were one of the "official egg turners"

 so you will know to ask them about it!

Kids will wear one of these badges at school the day they are 

one of the two "official egg turners."

Tom Messner Visits First Grade!

Prior to studying Mexico our class did a science theme unit studying weather. Yesterday we were fortunate enough to have Tom Messner (the head meteorologist on our local TV station) visit first grade to connect to our weather unit and teach us about meteorology! Make sure to ask your child about his visit; it was great!

Mexico Skype and Padlet

First graders are wrapping up our learning about Mexico today and our class did a couple of fantastic final activities! One of our big ideas in this country study unit has been "how are we alike and different from people/places in another country?" To think through their learning about this the kids created Venn Diagrams listing things that were similar and different about the USA and Mexico (about the people, geography, holidays, games, music, food, flag, etc). We then made a class padlet where each student could digitally share one of the things they had written on their Venn Diagram. The padlet and few photos of the Venn Diagrams are posted below.

As our final activity we did a Skype with the first grade class we have been communicating with in Monterrey, Mexico! We have been emailing and sending photos as a class and each sent each other a video introducing ourselves (they made a Google Presentation and we made an iMovie). In our videos we got to see each other, hear each other's voices, share some things we like, and ask questions to the other class. We answered each other's questions during our Skype today! I am so excited that we are part of the digital age where able to connect with people in other countries in these different ways. Learning about another country and how we are similar and different from people there was made so much more rich and meaningful by actually being able to see and talk to them! Our class had a lot of fun with this and will hopefully share about it with you at home today!

Created with Padlet

Hats!

Last night was our class' night to perform in our school musical, Hats! The musical included many famous characters with famous hats and a character searching for the right hat for her. She ends up discovering that it's not the hat who makes the person but rather what's under the hat/inside of you that counts! The students and our music teacher, Ms. Mutz, put in lots and lots of hard work to get ready for the musical and it was a lot of fun. Yesterday morning we went to the high school auditorium for a dress rehearsal then had our performance in the evening. Here are some photos!

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Amate Bark Paintings

First graders have been studying a social studies unit called "Places in Our World" over the past month, specifically focusing on the country of Mexico! We have learned about Mexico's map, geography, weather, and a bit about their music, food, art, and holidays. I have a connection with a first grade class in Monterrey, Mexico, and our two classes have been sending each other emails and photos as well as an iMovie introducing ourselves. Next week we hope to Skype with them so that we can ask each other questions and talk "in person!" 

This week we learned about several groups of native people who used to live in Mexico (such as the Maya and Aztecs) and made an art project originating with a group of native Mexicans called the Otomi. The Otomi make handmade, textured paper from the bark of Amate trees and then paint it with things like the sun, flowers, birds, animals, and other things found in everyday life using brilliant, sometimes fluorescent paints (which makes a beautiful contrast with the dark, handmade paper). 

We tried making our own version of Amate bark paintings, roughing up the edges of brown paper to look like Amate paper, then drawing birds, plants, animals, suns, etc with pencil on it. We then painted the drawings with fluorescent paint and finally outlined them with black marker to make them stand out. These will hang on the bulletin board outside our classroom and we will send home our last project (our spring symmetry paintings from last month)! Below are some photos taken during the process.

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Music Week and Musical

This week is our music week at UMS where everyone will have music on both our music and art days in preparation for our musical Hats. The musical will take place next Tuesday and Wednesday evening at Colchester High School, with half the school performing on Tuesday and the other half performing on Wednesday at 6:30pm (our class performs on Wednesday). Please join us for the show! It is always a lot of fun and the result of lots of hard work done by the kids and our music teacher Ms. Mutz!