Brrr! Look who’s in my backyard!
I looked out in my backyard this morning and there were penguins! I guess they have heard about our great snowfall and decided to move in.
Wonderful Ones, when you get back inside from playing, have a little fun with these Fun4theBrain games while you practice your addition and subtraction facts!
Whistle-pigs, Woodchucks, and Marmots have their say!
Happy Groundhog’s Day!
I read that these animals are also called marmots, woodchucks, land-beavers, whistle-pigs (my favorite), and groundhogs. What is your favorite name for the groundhog?
Check out National Geographic’s information page about the Groundhog.
Will the groundhog see his shadow on Tuesday?
poll | Comments (4)Organic Spelling and Star Wars
Sweet way to study!
Spelling notebooks have been created and we are hoping to come up with creative ways to study spelling patterns. It looks like Sadie has come up with a delicious recipe for learning! Thanks for the picture!
Spelling City has our lists for each remaining week of the school year. The link to our page can be found by clicking on Spelling City through our Sites We Like sidebar.
Found on a blog I follow (Hey Jude Blogspot): a link to Tom Scott’s – Star Wars Weather! Type in your city and see what the weather is like. Fun!
Wildlife Filmmakers in First Grade
Sadie, Sam, and Addison have been busy reading and researching animals. As they read their book, they collected interesting facts onto sticky notes. This week they took their sticky notes and put their facts into story form. Next we went to National Geographic’s Wildlife Filmmaker.
This is an easy way to make beautiful wildlife films. First they selected their film clips that matched their animals. Then they chose music that went with their theme. Next, their facts were typed in as captions, saved, and dragged onto the time line. Then the movie was ready.
I screen-captured the video with Jing and was able to grab an embed code for the blog (after some research!). Whew!
Presenting our first three Wildlife Films!
Sadie’s Giraffe Video:
Sam’s Jellyfish Video: coming soon
Addison’s Shark Video: coming soon
videos | Comment (1)Nathaniel and Fuzby!
Nathaniel’s Fuzby is on Fun4theBrain as a drawing lesson! We were just practicing the drawing lessons for Zizi, Chubz, and Zoink today. We put away our supplies and just minutes later the new blog post was added with Nathaniel’s monster.
We were all very excited and can’t wait to get out our drawing pads again and try Nathaniel’s Fuzby. Here’s the link if you can’t wait to try it!
Fuzby
art | Comment (1)An ipod story by Emma D.
On the ipods we watch fun videos. We like them. I have an ipod at home.
We have ear plugs so we do not disturb the class. We have a lot of videos. I like to play crayola on the ipods.
They are itouches. We have special black wipes we use to wipe the ipods with. We want to have more ipods so we can all have an ipod in our desk. We have bags to keep the ipods in.
We like the ipods!
itouch, writing | Comments (2)Dancing Dinosaurs and Grannies with Mohawks?
We had a great time today – even though we got out two hours early for the icy rain! We worked hard in our literacy centers this morning, had an early lunch, and finished our math before dismissal. After we finished math, we practiced using our itouches or we got our five mini computers and the smartboard tuned in to Fun4theBrain and practiced more math skills. Here are some of our favorite games.
Now, don’t make your Granny with a mohawk! That’s just wrong! 
Help for Haiti
Last week, our principal, Mr. Graham came on our morning news announcements and issued a challenge for the students of McHarg Elementary. He hoped that each of the 500 students in our K-2 school could bring one dollar to donate to our Honeybee Fund – to be given to the American Red Cross on Friday.
He brought to our attention the devastating earthquake that occurred in Haiti – something that I had not yet discussed with the students. I quickly pulled down the world map, grabbed a globe, chose some appropriate literature and switched gears for my lesson plans.
Photo from United Nations Development Programme’s Flickr Photostream, attributed with Creative Commons license.
We studied the location of Virginia and Haiti on the world map and the globe. The students were shown some carefully chosen pictures of the suffering in Haiti, hopefully just enough to give them an age-appropriate idea of what was happening. We read a story called Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed and discussed how the small actions of one person could blossom into something bigger.
The Wonderful Ones decided that in addition to donations, that we should draw and write about how this made us feel. It was our hope that by creating this youtube video, others would see it and be inspired to find their own way to assist others in need through their local church, school, the American Red Cross, or other aid organization.
Does it dissolve?
Corn, dirt, sunflower seeds, hot chocolate mix, baking soda, rocks, sand, sugar, and salt… what do these things have in common?
Well, we used all of them to discover what would dissolve in water.
We found out that some solids dissolve faster in hot water… we know heat is energy!
Here are our small groups reporting what they discovered.
videos | Comment (1)What’s the Matter?
We are studying matter.
Today we conducted experiments to see which liquids would mix with water and which liquids would not mix with water.
Student reporters tell the results:
(notice my eyeballs popping out?! – they really did!) Sadie writes and draws about the accident during our experiment when two girls flipped over the container of cooking oil.
