Oobleck

As one of our last activities with solids and liquids, our class made and experimented with oobleck today! We started by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck, which is one of Dr. Seuss' wonderful books about a thick, sticky, liquid substance that falls from the sky as a new type of weather! After reading it we made our own oobleck by mixing corn starch with water to create a liquid substance that also seems to have some properties of a solid! Students had the chance to explore the oobleck at different times during the day, observing how it seemed, at times, like a liquid, and at times, like a solid! Below are some photos of us exploring the properties of oobleck!

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Solids and Liquids Padlet

Our class wrapped up our Solids and Liquids science theme today! Kids are bringing home their lapbooks, which are folders full of learning and activities they did during the unit. Our final product as a class was the padlet below. Each student thought of a solid or liquid and explained to me how they know it is a solid or liquid, then we typed it into this padlet! At home, ask your child to name a solid, a liquid, and a gas, and how they know. They can all explain the meaning of the words solid, liquid, gas, and matter now!

Created with Padlet

Extra Math and Sight Word Practice Through the Blog!

I have had some questions about practicing math skills and sight words online, at home, since RAZ Kids and the kids' blogs are available from home for kids to practice reading and writing. Today I updated the math and Fry word tabs at the top bar of my blog so that you are better able to practice these other skills at home!

The Fry Words tab provides links for interactive practice of first grade sight words. Memorizing sight words is an important part of learning to read and students would benefit from the opportunity to practice this both at school and at home.

Teachers at our school use the Everyday Math as a guideline for K-2 math instruction. I created a tab at the top of my blog with a link to the student login for the Everyday Math website. Once students/parent log in you will have access to games, practice, and information corresponding to each unit of study in first grade math. The other math tab at the top of my blog leads to many different math practice and math game links.

If you are looking for additional ways to practice first grade skills at home, please click on the tabs along the top of my blog and have a look at what is there! There are links to many different resources you may find useful.

Parent Conferences Are Next Week!

Parent-teacher conferences are right around the corner! Find out more, including why they are important and how you can get the most of them, in today's Spotlight article:
http://csdspotlight.org/2013/11/18/why-are-parent-teacher-conferences-important/

Community Helpers

First graders have finished our theme unit on Community Helpers! During this unit we learned the meaning of "community," and how people in the community do many different jobs to help each other and to keep the community a safe, healthy, and pleasant place to be! Students met police officers and fire fighters at school and did a walking field trip to meet librarians at the Burnham Library down the road. Students also interviewed someone at home about their job, then shared the interview in class, so that the class could learn about many more of the community helpers in our area. Finally students picked a job they think they might like to do when they grow up and wrote how the job would help their community. Students in our class made a "lapbook" (a folder that opens like a book and fits on their lap) to keep some of the projects they worked on during this unit and they will be bringing those home today and tomorrow. Our class also created an iMovie where the students recorded what job they would like to have when they grow up and how it would help the community! The iMovie has been posted to YouTube and can be seen there as well as through the link below.

Community Helpers iMovie

First graders have now moved on to a theme unit studying solids and liquids. More to come on that soon!

Quality Blog Comments

Now that students have begun blogging with pen pals from our partner class in Essex, I want to post a reminder about quality commenting. When we began learning to blog our class watched this video about making quality blog comments, then made a poster about what makes a quality blog comment. We refer to the poster several times each week as we work on blogging, so the kids are getting very good at writing quality blog comments! If you are helping your child blog with their pen pal at home (or comment on friends' blogs in our class), you can refer to these same tips!

Tips for writing a quality blog comment:

1. Give a specific compliment
2. Add new information (about what the blogger posted)
3. Make a connection
4. Ask a question
5. Always proofread your comment before publishing/submitting!

Blogging with Pen Pals -- New Directions

Due to a log-in snafu, I had to change the way we access our pen pals' blogs. It is a little more round-about than I was hoping for, but it works! Please read these new directions if you would like to help your child blog with their pen pal at home!

Directions: Have your child click on their blog link on the right side bar of my blog, then sign in with their last name as the password (they are used to doing this part). Now, have your child click the part that says, "Mrs. Kelly's Class," at the very top of the blog. On the new page that pops up, scroll down to where it says "Blogroll" on the right and click the link that says "Mrs. P's Class." When her classroom blog pops up have your child click on his/her pen pal's name to leave comments.

Unfortunately we have to do these extra steps (and it is not as easy as just going to her blog webpage and clicking the partner's name) because the students in our class have to be logged in to Kid Blog in order to read the posts left by the other class. I am teaching the students in our class how to do this so hopefully it will become second nature soon!

Blogging with Pen Pals

This week our class started blogging with pen pals in Mrs. P's class in Essex, which is one of the classes involved in our Quad Blog project (see an earlier post for more information on the Quad Blog)! Students in our class and students in Mrs. P's class all have their own Kid Blogs and have been practicing using them for about a month now. The list of student blogs for our class can be found on the right side bar of this blog. Just click on your child's name, read their posts, and have fun leaving comments!

This week Mrs. P and I launched our blog pen pal exchange! Students in our two classes were paired up, our classes met through Skype so that students could meet their partner, then the students began blogging to one another as pen pals. We are learning to do this in class but it would be wonderful if kids blogged with their pen pals at home too! Below is a list of the names of partners, in case your child needs a reminder (since these are very new partnerships).

Blog pen pals partnerships:

Sydney and Amina
Dylan and Cadel
Torren and Christopher
Maura, Hannah, and Emma
Damian and Evan
Garrett, Longshore, and Gage
Rishon and Ira
Vito and Isaac
Laila and Izzy
Nabeeha and Bella
Lily and Jade
Parker and Joe
Mackenzie and Katie
Mustafa and Liam
Melanie and Mirabelle
Trevor and Rory
Jaylee and Sarah
Grant and Tegan
Zoe and Keaton

Halloween

Yesterday was a very exciting day at school! The Colchester High School drama department will be putting on the play "The Wizard of Oz" in two weeks at the high school (Nov 14-16) and yesterday morning some of the cast came to UMS in costume to perform some of the songs from the play for us! In the afternoon our class had our annual harvest party where many family members came to join us in making some festive crafts and eating fun, festive treats! Thank you so much to all of the family members who came to join us and help organize and support our party!

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4 Winds

Today our class had our first 4 Winds lesson of the year! 4 Winds is a wonderful science and nature program run by parent volunteers and our class is fortunate enough to have two parents teaching 4 Winds in our class this year! Today's lesson focused on leaves as part of the food chain and started with a puppet show followed by explorations and sorting of leaves both in our classroom and out on the playground. We got very excited about the activities and I forgot to take photos, so unfortunately I have none to post. I will try to have my camera at the ready for our next 4 Winds lesson (we plan to have about one each month). Thank you Jenn and Bradley for teaching our 4 Winds lessons this year!