Once Upon A Time

Fairy Tale books we read!

Who doesn't love reading about a world of giants, trolls, witches, and dragons with the fearsome magic they use, especially when you know the hero will always have the victory and everything will end 'Happily Ever After'?! Fairytales bring us to a land far away and long ago and share features of special numbers, royalty, magic, good vs. bad, and of course that happy ending. We have been identifying these features as we read, Puss In Boots, Rose Red & Snow White, Young Arthur, Young Lancelot, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast. We've also read non fiction books about castles and have had fun in our library area full of castles, knights, and fairies.

Let's play!

Our library display

We all have the same fairy tale book!

So many exciting books!

 Along with reading Fairy Tales, we are also reading some Folktales and Fables such as The Little Red Hen, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
 These stories feature talking animals, or they tell a lesson or have a moral to the story. 
                               

Buddy reading The Ugly Duckling

We have moved on to Geometry in math and are identifying and naming features of plane and solid shapes. We are using pattern blocks to combine them in ways to make a shape such as a hexagon, and we will be learning the vocabulary of sides, vertex, face, and surface as we work with the shapes.

The Museum of Science came to first grade this week with their program on stars!

We saw stars and constellations inside!

Using binoculars

Making observations

 Everyone went inside the inflatable 'star lab' and looked up in wonder as we sat in the dark and identified constellations, and some planets. Hope everyone gets some cloud free nights to take a look at the stars in Tyngsboro. You might spot Orion's Belt or the Big Dipper, maybe even the North Star!

This tied in nicely with our current science theme of Earth & Space. We have been the 'earth' rotating around the 'sun' (my desk lamp) to see how our rotation results in day and night. 

It seems all our subjects have begun a new topic, and social studies has also moved on to learning about maps, cardinal directions, map keys, and our place in the world.

This turquoise rock is pretty cool!

Writing has entered a new genre as well - Poetry! This is a whole new way of thinking from the Informational writing we just completed. We have been using our senses to describe items, and looking at things through a different, imaginative lens. Take a look at our nature display that we are using to write poems about.

Snake skin, arrowheads, gems, shells, bird nests...

These are Shape Poems

For a little free time fun, the puzzlemania group has struck!

Some of our experts!

The Distance Learning packet will go home on Tuesday, May 7 and will be due by May 17. This is a variety of activities designed to provide reading, writing, social studies, science, and math practice to make up for the missed day of school on the professional development day of May 14, when school is closed for students. See the school website for more information. The kids will enjoy their packet all based on an Earth &  Space theme.

We still need some rectangular tissue boxes as we plan on making the castles at the end of next week. Thanks!

Have a nice weekend,
Valerie