Stony Brook

What a great day at Stony Brook Wildlife Sanctuary! The weather was perfect, the habitats were beautiful, and the wildlife was out for the viewing. We started our field trip with a little preview from one of Stony Brook's naturalists. She gave us a quick overview of the habitats we would visit and then we were off! We learned about the forest, the pond, and the meadow. We saw birds, turtles, a salamander, and even a snake! Here is some of the highlights from our day...

The Pond

Jack found a snail!

Observing a turtle shell

 One of the inhabitants

The Forest

This tree is growing sideways!

Just hanging around

Fiddle heads have been around since the dinosaurs!

An example of erosion

Pretending to be mice foraging for food

The Waterfall

Leaning in for a closer look

The Meadow

If you look VERY closely you can see a family of geese including their little goslings.
We didn't want to disturb them, so we didn't spend a lot of time in the meadow.

A Little Extra...

Can you spot the tiny frog?
Hint: look straight at the middle..he blends right in!

Home Stretch!

I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation, whether you relaxed at home or got to get away for a bit. April vacation comes at the perfect time to help rejuvenate us for the homestretch! It's hard to believe that so much of the year has passed, but (and this is a BIG but), there's still so much to do! This week we were visited by Mrs. Goldstein again. She's helping us learn about our smarts or the unique things that we are good at and that make us who we are. We're also continuing our work with shapes, focusing on triangles and quadrilaterals. In writer's workshop we are wrapping up our teaching chapter books. The children will be sharing these with you soon! Finally, we celebrated poetry week by enjoying poems read to us by staff members during  poetry breaks!

Learning about our Smarts

Mrs. Goldstein reading us a story

Showing us how to fill our "brains" with all of the different kinds of  smarts we came up with

Working on filling in our own brains with smarts! Ask your  child what kind of smarts he or she has...

Learning about Traingles and Quadrilaterals

Sorting polygons (all simple shapes with straight sides)

Making shapes on the Geoboard with rubber bands and on dot paper

Editing our Teaching Books

We practiced reading and rereading and even rereading our stories to make them ready for our readers!

Poetry Break!

Reader's Theater

This group read a story called Snip!Snap! about an elephant whose truck kept getting in the way of the other animals in the jungle until one day when there was a fire in the jungle and Elephant and her long trunk came to the rescue. They did an awesome job!

Geometry, Grace Lin, and Pajama time

First of all I CANNOT believe we are coming up to April vacation!! The days can be long, but those months sure fly by....especially here in first grade where there is ALWAYS so much going on. This week was no exception. There was the excitement of pajama day, the anticipated visit from author Grace Lin, and of course all of the great learning that happened!

Geometry
The last 2 weeks of math have been all about exploring 2D shapes. The goals of this unit are to teach children how to develop language that describe attributes of shapes (including sides and corners), how to take shapes apart, and how to put shapes together in different ways. We used our pattern blocks and pattern block cut outs to fill various outlines, create designs, and play games like Fill the Hexagon.

Playing Fill the Hexagon

Filling the same outline in different ways

Filling an outline with more and fewer shapes

Pajama Day
They followed directions, they did their best work, they were kind and helpful to each other, they thought about expected and unexpected behavior at school and they earned .......PAJAMA DAY!!

Morning Meeting with a few extra friends

Reading to Someone during Daily Five

Working with Words 

Reading to Self (and friend)

Reading table

Reading table

A Visit from Grace Lin
What an exciting treat! Grace Lin, author and illustrator, came to our school for a visit. She taught us all about the difference between a published and not published book. She taught us all about the many people who help publish a book including an editor, art director, and binder. Some of us even got to volunteer! We got to hear her read from one of her books and learned about how the Chinese years were named. Ask your child about the Year of the Dog and The Year of the Pig. We even learned how to draw  lucky Chinese Dragons. Ask your child how many whiskers they added to their dragon. :)

Grace Lin's first book

Publishing takes a lot of people...

A lot of hard work...

And at least a year...sometimes longer!

Teaching us how to draw a lucky dragon

Proud of our pictures!

HAPPY APRIL VACATION!

Habitat Habitat...Have to Have a Habitat!

"Habitat Habitat...Have to Have a Habitat! Have to have a habitat to carry on!!" sung to the tune of "Lollipop,Lollipop." It's one of our newer poems and it's a very catch tune! It's also the main topic of science over the last couple of weeks. We are learning all about organisms and their habitats. We've created 2 habitats of our own; freshwater and woodland. We even had a visitor from Stony Brook that helped us learn a little more about some of the habitats we'll be exploring on our upcoming field trip including; the pond, forest, and meadow.

Let's Observe....

A group looks closely at moss and a tree seedling and records their
observations in their science journal.

This group is looking at all of the organisms in our aquarium. We have plants called Elodea and Cabomba as well as guppies and snails.

This group is noticing the differences between the woodland (or forest)
plants and recording their ideas on a Venn Diagram. 

Pond snails! We wondered what do they look like, how do they move, what
parts do they have??

A Visit from Stony Brook

Learning about what organisms need in their habitats

Learning which habitats we'll get to see when we visit Stony Brook

Groups Working to create and share posters of habitats

Finally....a special friend!