Holiday Party!

Today was our last school day before the December break! We wrapped up our day with a holiday party where many parents joined us for special treats and some fun! We played the dreidel game, made paper reindeer and trees, and enjoyed a break from our usual routine. Thank you to all the parents who sent in goodies and joined us for our celebration! Have a wonderful break and a safe, happy holiday!

Picture slideshow customized with Smilebox

Crayon Resist Tree Project

This week students worked on an art project in class making Christmas Trees with crayons, water color paint, and construction paper. We did something very cool, called Crayon Resist, where we drew snowflakes with white crayon on white paper, then watched them "magically appear" when we painted over them with blue water color paint! We then used rulers to measure different sized construction paper strips which we cut out and glued onto our snowflake papers to make a tree! Our last step was to decorate the trees with glitter, sequins, and a star at the top. Below is a slideshow of our process. We loved this project and the trees came out beautifully.

This picture slideshow created with Smilebox

Holiday Sing Along

On Wednesday December 19 UMS had our annual holiday sing along! Ms. Mutz, our wonderful music teacher, led the whole school in singing songs about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, and more that the children had been practicing in music class! Below are some photos of the sing-along.

Places in Our World Theme Study

First grade students are beginning a unit of study called "Places in Our World." All four first grade classrooms will be doing a country study of Mexico as the focus of our unit. Our class wrapped up our mapping unit early this week where we spent some time learning about where Mexico is in relation to the United States and in the world. This week we did some learning about December holidays in Mexico including Las Posadas, which takes place between December 16-24. We also learned about Poinsettias, which originally bloomed only in Mexico during December. We have a red and green Poinsettia in our room and have done reading and art to learn more about this beautiful plant from Mexico! Below are a few photos of students holding their Poinsettia artwork. We will continue learning about Mexico after we return from December break.

Poetry

Our class is learning about poetry writing! We will be working on poetry for the couple weeks leading up to break then revisit it during the spring. Poetry is a very fun genre of writing for beginning writers because poems can have as much or as little structure as the writer wants, they can be any length or format, and can be about absolutely anything! We have only been working on this for a few days so far but I am already so impressed by the poems the first graders in our class are writing! Below is a poem about snow that we did as a whole-class shared writing activity yesterday.

Snow
falls from the sky.
Snow
comes from clouds.
Snow
falls heavy.
Snow
melts.
No more snow!

CHS Holiday Chorus Performance at UMS

This morning the Freshman Chorus from Colchester High School came to UMS and did a singing performance of different holiday songs for our students! Several of the singers are former UMS students! The chorus will be having a concert at the high school at 7pm next Wednesday December 19 for anyone interested in hearing them sing. It was a special treat to hear them sing for us at school today!

DARE

In January our class will have four DARE lessons, one each week, with Officer Fontaine of the Colchester Police Department. DARE is a great program that teaches students about making safe, healthy choices. DARE looks a bit different at each grade level. In first grade, DARE focuses on personal safety. The four lessons are titled: 1) Personal Safety 2) Drugs: Helpful or Harmful (for first graders the focus is on medicine and medications that might be at home. The lesson teaches children that medicine can be both helpful and harmful and that they should never take it on their own) 3) Learning to Say No 4) Dealing with Angry Feelings If you have any questions about the DARE lessons please let me know!