I am happy to be teaching first grade again this year! I have two children and one very busy husband. I love to read and shop. I hope you enjoy our work. Come visit often!
The students are learning about matter. We have learned that matter can be a solid, liquid or gas. We have done lots of investigations about matter and its changes. This week our focus was on water. Water is one of the few things that can be all three states of matter. The students were challenged to design a building for a city we were creating. They were not told what the buildings would be made of until they created a design. Then I told them they would be using ice and asked them if they would change their designs. There were lots of good design questions. Finally we assembled our building from ice. They found it was very difficult to do. We discussed their observations and what they would change in order to make this 'work'. Then we read our Scholastic News about an ice festival in China where they use ice to create a city. The students were impressed by this display.
Students used traits to separate ocean animals and plants into two groups. We used color, shape, plants and animals, and more traits to sort them. We are learning about the Coral Reef habitat in our study of plants and animals needs. We will discover that certain plants and animals are made to live in a specific habitat.
The students are learning about animals in science. We got a letter from Dr. Zooby, an animal caretaker, who needed help taking care of some of his animals. He gave each group a type of animal and then the students had to tell him what the animal needed to live and grow. It was challenging trying to decide what were needs for each animal and what were wants of the animals. Dr. Zooby was very happy to see such great problem solvers in first grade.