Martial Arts

This week we started our 10 week Martial Arts program. On our first day we learned the signal for attention and practiced different kinds of animal walks-from duck to frog to crab, the kiddos had a great time!

We Survived 100 Days of First Grade!

I can't believe 100 days have already gone by! To celebrate the 100th day of school we worked in centers to earn a 100 points for the day. Each center was worth 10 points and the children chose the order they wanted to do them.
Some of the centers were making a 100 day hat and snack, doing 100 exercises, illustrating our 100 day poem, measuring with a hundred paper clips, drawing ourselves when we are 100 year old, and creating a 100 word collage.
One of my favorites was writing to the prompt "If I've told you once, I've told a 100 times..." Apparently they are told to clean their rooms A LOT!
Now that we have counted up to the 100th day, we will count down to the last day of school. Only 74 left! Where is the time going?

Scientist of the Week

Our latest scientist taught us how to keep our apples from turning brown after we cut them. The secret? Lemon juice! Our scientist showed us a chart they made to organize the pieces of apple, and we had a great discussion about controlling our variables. Super job!

Where were you...

for the inauguration?
We got together with other first grade classes to watch it live on TV and have a picnic lunch. The children were so into it. They were a great audience and soaking up all the details. We tried to spot one of our classmates that was attending but gave up on that idea when we saw how many people were there. They wanted to know about all the previous presidents and other important people in attendance. We listened to the musical transitions, and saw the oath and speech. We thought it was cool that someone wrote a special poem just like we do in the poetry center. The loved spotting Sasha and Malia. Afterward we reflected on what we saw and learned about on this historic day.

Scientist of the Week

We learned all about color being absorbed by celery stalks thanks to our scientist of the week. In addition to showing his results, he set up the experiment in our science center for us to continue our investigation. Great job!

Me and My Shadow

We were "marmatologists" this week. You know, the people who study groundhogs? We learned a lot of cool facts like:
1. A groundhog or whistle pig can move 700lbs of dirt in one day!
2. Groundhogs can swim and climb trees.
3. Groundhogs have a separate potty from their nest inside their burrows.
4. When a groundhog hibernates, it breathes only once every six minutes. We tried it ourselves, the longest anybody was able to do it was about 1 minute.
5. A groundhogs teeth are always growing.

We also did some work with our shadows. We measured them at 3 different times of day. We discoverd that as the day goes on, our shadows become shorter!

Science Fair

I am so proud of all our budding scientists! We had four fabulous entries into the science fair, and even a 2nd place winner! The children did a great job of sharing and explaining their projects with the whole class.

Junie B Part 2

We had a wonderful time at the Paramount for the Junie B Jones performance. The children were excellent audience members. They loved being at the top of theater, and we can't stop singing "Top Secret Personal Beeswax" (well at least I can't-it's very catchy!)