Sheep, Alpacas, Rabbits, Oh My!

First graders enjoyed their third visit with our Farmer friend, Miss Virginia of the New England Dairy Council.  This visit focused on farms that produce wool and other natural fibers - sheep, alpaca, and rabbit farms.  Students learned about the process that fiber goes through starting from the animal and going all the way to a sweater, or the end product.  They experienced pulling raw wool, and touched carded wool, saw three different types of yarns, as well as three different examples of finished products.  After learning about the process, the items and steps were mixed up and first graders worked to put them back into the correct order.  Did you know that alpaca fiber is 8 times warmer than sheep wool?!

PJ and Stuffy Day!!

First graders did it!  We completed 60 hours of reading homework and earned a reward!  Great work, students!!!

Mystery Rules

Guess My Secret Rule is a favorite sorting game during our geometry unit.  Partners take turns coming up with a secret rule for sorting by various attributes of shapes.  Some examples are: all the quadrilaterals, all the rectangles, all the shapes with curved sides, etc.  Students can come up with some very tricky rules!!

"How To" Books

After finishing our first writing unit on Small Moment narratives, first graders jumped right into learning about writing "How To" books.  They are learning that this is a whole different genre of writing, with a completely different purpose.  The class wrote a shared book together about How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.  Each step in the process was written out in order, and today the book was put to the test!  Ms Purvee followed the steps to see if, in fact, they would lead to the making of a pb&j sandwich.  It was a success!  We ended up with an edible pb&j sandwich, although we noted some missing details that will need to be added in before publication!

Exploring Quadrilaterals

Today our math time included the discovery of a new term: quadrilateral!  What a mouthful!  We were excited to learn that it really just means a shape with four straight sides, four vertices (another new term!) and is closed.  We sorted through our power polygon sets for quadrilaterals and found out that there are many different examples of them. 

Investigating Triangles

First graders explored a variety of geometric shapes with a new tool, Power Polygons!  On this day, they sorted through their shapes for all of the triangles. Not everyone was convinced that all of the 3-sided shapes were really triangles, as they didn't look like the "regular triangles."  We will continue to investigate this!  Students also explored making triangles on Geoboards and dot paper.  

Pattern Block Fun

First graders have been doing a lot of visual/spatial activities using pattern blocks as part of our geometry unit.  Activities have included filling in various shapes, creating their own designs using a given number of blocks, figuring out how to use different, smaller pattern blocks to create a larger pattern block shape, and filling in the same shape different ways.