Plants

 For our spring science unit we are learning about plants! We planted rye grass and alfalfa together in cups and are observing their growth and we also "planted" wheat seeds in straws to watch what happens on both ends of the seed. For our wheat experiment we put some straws by the window and some in the closet so that we can observe the difference between those exposed to light and those that are not. So far both have sprouted and we discussed that seeds do sprout in the dark (underground) but in order to grow into a healthy plant they will need light. We are predicting to see a difference as the experiment continues. So far the sprouts by the window are greener than those in the closet (which are pretty white). 

Today was a rainy Friday afternoon so we made a plant art project to show the different parts of a plant!

Fact Families

 We have been learning about fact families for a couple of weeks now and as a fun, Friday, spring activity kids made Fact Family butterflies to hang on our windows.

Nonfiction

 Our third trimester is all about nonfiction! We are reading nonfiction and learning about text features, and we learning how to research and write nonfiction reports! Our research and report writing began with everyone in our class researching and writing about penguins and now students are working on researching animals of their own choice! Next we will do a larger research project focused on sharks. This trimester/unit is always lots of fun!

PBIS Celebrations!

 This week we ended up having both a classroom and a whole school celebration for meeting our PBIS goals! 

In class we filled our Champ Band bucket and had a paper plane celebration. Many students in our class enjoy making paper planes so we decided that as our celebration everyone would make one and we would see how far they could fly down a path in the hall. Our planes traveled between 1-8 yards!

This week we just so happened to have earned a whole school celebration as well! Our whole school met our goal for Champ Bands earned and our celebration was an American Ninja Warrior course! This was set up in our gym and all classes got a chance to try it during PE! So much fun!

DARE

 Our class started our DARE lessons for the year this week. Our school resource officer, Officer Bressler will be coming to class to teach lessons on safety during the month of March. In first grade the focus of DARE lessons will be personal safety such as knowing who to ask for help, calling 911, recognizing and using safety signs/traffic lights, avoiding harmful substances like medications or cleaning products unless an adult helps. Our first lesson focused on how to use 911 in an emergency.

100th Day of School

 February 18th was our 100th Day of school! In a typical year our four first grade classrooms get together to do some celebratory activities but this year is anything but normal. One of our classes is fully remote learning and the three that are here do not get together for health reasons. We got creative with some fun activities we could do this year, some in our own rooms and a couple "together." Together we did a food drive working together to collect 100 items for the food shelf between our classrooms and actually ended up with a total of 260! We also had first graders walk one or two laps around our playground (the snow was too deep to run) and added those together to get 100 laps! Here are a few photos.