Learning at home...

Hi everyone! Miss you!

Hello to all my first graders- I can't believe we are all in our homes and not in school! Not to worry! We will be in touch by email beginning Monday, March 23. I will send you activities and links to books and learning that you can work on from home. It's important to keep your reading, writing, and math skills sharp!

We will be working on How-To writing, identifying features of text in non fiction books that you will read, telling time, solving addition and subtraction problems with unknowns in different positions, and identifying 3 D shapes in math. Geography will be a focus in social studies. I know you know the Continent song! Here is a closer look (and a sneak peek!) at science topics.
 
Animals. We will learn how their body structures (parts) are unique and specially suited to their survival needs. Take a look at this little toad that was on my house once. Those sticky pads on its toes are the reason it can climb and cling to all sorts of surfaces. It might even help him reach the little moth which was also on my house (I hope not!)

Super toes!!

Pretty little moth

I bet landing on a light gray house helped this moth blend in (camouflage!). We will learn about 
classifying animals too. Which animals
have fur, feathers, or scales? Which 
are mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, or amphibians?

Parents and their offspring and life cycles of animals will also be fun to explore.

 Take a look at these beaks- all very different from each other but perfectly suited for the kind of food they eat and for their habitats!

Short, sharp beak- watch out mice!

We loved Puffins!

A very long beak!

A beak for clams and fish

 Two of these birds are from a museum but the other two I saw outdoors. All four have feathers (that's the common feature to all birds), yet they live in very different places and have very different beaks, feet, and wings. 

Be sure to check in each day on the emails. Check out this blog too. We will continue to add our new words of the week. It's sad not having your pictures on here like we usually do, but who knows? Maybe you will take a picture of something these next weeks to share!

Have a great weekend,
Mrs. Dagley

 

Maps, 3 D solids, and How-To's

Our 3 D map of Tyngsboro!

Wow! It was so awesome to set up all our paper bag houses and buildings in an approximation of our town! We determined where we should place the buildings using the river, school, and our northern neighboring state of New Hampshire. We had almost every place in Tyngsboro represented from restaurants Tremontes. Cazedores, Sullivan's...), entertainment (Max's Golf, Roller Kingdom...), municipal buildings (fire and police station, library, schools, a church...), Dunkin's (I didn't even need to come up with that one!), and others. It was a fun wrap up to our map unit.

We also wrapped up the plants unit in science by reading about and drawing plant life cycles. Everyone also teamed up to do research on a plant of their choosing which had a unique habitat. They learned what each plant needs in its given habitat and how weather affects its survival. Venus Flytrap was a popular choice (it grows in the swamps of the Carolinas in the USA), Forget-Me-Not, a mountain dweller, cactus, a desert plant, and lily pads, thriving in ponds.

Lily pads and pond habitat research

Venus Flytraps and their swamp habitats

Now that we have traveled the world from the rainforests to the arctic and to Antarctica, we will change our library theme to the American west. Lots of new book series and activities await! Meanwhile here is our final Penguin activity- a bit of research on a penguin of their choice: Emperor, Little Blue, Macaroni, King, and Chinstrap.

Our penguin reports

We are becoming experts on identifying 3D shapes in blocks and drawings, but also in real world examples. We've enjoyed a few youtube videos (3 D shapes I know...) and have sung along with them. We have sorted objects together under each shape heading, and we have identified shapes by their most important attributes of number of faces, edges, and vertices. 

We know the attributes!

Shape sorting team

Teamwork with shapes

Organized items identified!

Math stations explore drawing in 3 D, identifying real world objects that have attributes of 3 D shapes, and hunting for pictures in dictionaries that are spheres, cylinders, cubes, cones, rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, and pyramids.

Dictionary hunt for 3 D shaped items

Spin a real world object that matches a 3 D shape

Shape game

 Phonics is definitely ramping up a bit as we decode words with vowel teams (oa, ea, ai...). The same general rule applies to these words as it did with silent e words- most times if there are 2 vowels, the first one will 'say' its name and the second will be silent. Here we are singing, "When two vowels set off walking, only one can do the talking...".

We spelled 'toad'!

We've also been learning how to spell number words and have a cheer for number one. Reading buddies enjoyed some new books together this week - take a look!

We read the whole book together!

The Great Fuzz Frenzy

New western book series!

Saying the cheer for spelling 'one'!

My pot of gold

I guess we are missing St. Patrick's Day but these friends got a sneak coloring activity with some sparkly gold!

Writing activities are now focusing on procedural writing or 'How-Tos'. The kids have been writing the steps for riding a bike, making a smoothie, caring for a baby, building legos, planting flowers, and many more. They are using transitional words such as First, Next, Then, and Last. The personal narrative collection will be sent home soon. 

I would like to wish Cherylynn a Happy Birthday - it is today but we are not in school. Hope you have a fun birthday - we will sing to you when we are back!

The 2nd trimester has ended and we will look forward to many new units. Keep hunting for examples of 3 D shapes, practicing telling time (especially to the half hour), reading anything around your house, telling directions on how to do things that you are an expert in (using our transitional words), and practicing spelling! Report cards are complete but locked in school - great progress everyone!

Most of all, I wish everyone a very healthy week!

Mrs. Dagley

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Listen to us read!

What a great time in the school year to celebrate Dr. Seuss' contribution to children's reading! So many of his books are accessible to the reading levels of first graders, and this week the kids have been on a marathon of reading Seuss books. We also read aloud one of his longer books- Bartholomew and the Oobleck. In that story, something green and gooey falls from the sky - oobleck, so we thought we'd make some ourselves using cornstarch, food coloring, and water. What fun to immerse little hands in the slippery, drippy, yet also dryish goo! The kids asked for the recipe, which I sent home but I'd suggest halving it (if you do try it out, despite the messy factor!).

Ahhh the gooey oobleck!

Lovin' the texture!

Watch it slowly drip!

Yes! I want more!

Leading in Dr. Seuss rhymes

We concluded our mini focus on penguins this week, finishing and reading our Lap Books- hope you had fun sharing the contents with your child at home! This week, everyone chose a favorite penguin to research and write about. Little Blue was a favorite- only 16 inches tall, blueish feathers, and living in Southern Australia. The Emperor Penguin was also popular, being the tallest, living in Antarctica, and having an orange patch on its neck. Other choices were the King Penguin, Macaroni Penguin (with the funny hairdo), and a couple of others. We also measured and compared heights of penguins to ourselves!

Taller or the same as Emperor?

I'm the size of the Emperor!

Little Blue Penguin researchers

Macaroni team researchers

What did you learn about the Emperor?

Recording penguin facts

Our penguin Lap Books!

Sharing Lap Book info

Mini tube penguins

 Social Studies had lots of hands-on activity this week as we began assembling our paper bag building town. Everyone painted a paper bag house and a bag for a place in Tyngsboro including the school, Sullivan's, Max's Golf, the police and fire station, library, Dunkin' Donuts, AMC, The Dollar Tree, and several of our restaurants. After painting, we decorated with paper windows, doors, and signs. The last and final step will be to arrange all the buildings and roads, river, and bridge in a large floor map of our town.

Let's paint our bags!

What color are you choosing?

I'm painting the school!

Let's get started!

Decorating with windows and doors

I love my paper bag house!

Ready to make our town!

Social Studies video to inspire our project

Math activities have moved on to learning about 3 D shapes. We've had some great online songs to help learn their names and have seen real life photos of buildings and items that are examples of spheres, rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, cubes, cylinders, and cones. Exploring wooden blocks, hunting for real life items in the dictionaries that represent the shapes, drawing them in 3D, and completing compare and contrast papers have helped us identify their attributes. New vocabulary consists of 'faces' (flat surfaces), 'edges', and 'vertex' (point or corner). 

Here we are in a few language arts activities: 

Sorting by color

Sharing poetry

We had a very happy birthday girl this week- happy birthday to Anisha!
We enjoyed a STRIPES assembly about perseverance and read the book Rescue and Jessica, A Life Saving Friendship in preparation for our author visit on Monday.

Practicing words

Enjoy the sunshine and have a nice weekend!
Mrs.  Dagley