Tea Project is a Success!

 I wanted to share this video that I created for a culminating project for the Tea Project class that I have been taking this semester.  The students have been very engaged and thoughtful throughout this whole process of exploring mindfulness & plants (perennials, annuals, and wild ones).  I have enjoyed this time with all of them thoroughly!

A Tasty Week!

Greetings!

With 14 days left to first grade, we continue to be working hard and having fun together. We explored the phases of the moon this week.  We tried to make as many phases we could create out of Oreo cookies, who knew the moon was so tasty!! 

This past week we continued to practice adding endings (-ed, -ing, -est) to words.  Next week we will focus on contractions - a shortened form of a word that omits certain letters (it is = it's).  We will also continue to explore character traits and work towards mapping out our stories - exploring setting, problem & solutions.

I am sure you have heard about all the dandelion learning that has been had through these last two weeks. First graders love dandelions and they are in such an abundance so why not spend some time learning about this incredible plant!  The highlight of the week was frying up some dandelion fritters in class! Very tasty!

During ECO we sang songs, read the Legend of the Dandelion, explored, and then sat in our sit spots.  We wrote and drew about what we observed from our unique spot.  It was lovely having a guest out in the woods with us.  Thank you, Mark!

May Flowers!

 Happy May!

The weather is finally turning for the better now!  Last week's ECO time left us all with excitement with all the life and growth exploding right now in the fields and forests.  Many children delighted in picking bouquets of dandelions.  While we were outside students chose from a variety of pictures and decided which VT animal was their favorite.  We chatted and wrote down reasons why we thought that animal was the best!

In Reading, we began our fiction unit.  Last week was fun-filled with reader's theater!  Each group chose a character or two and practiced reading a script.  On Friday some groups chose to read their script in front of the class.  They were a little comical and the students did a fabulous job getting into their character!  

Math we have been diving into place value, breaking up a number, and understanding what that number represents.  For example, 32 means that there are 3 sets of tens and 2 ones.  

In Science, we continue to blast into space exploring the solar system and recognizing the patterns in the sky.  Last week we discussed how the sun (appears to) move in the sky.  We watched a Mystery Doug that showed someone getting lost and then being able to use the position of the sun to guide them back home. 

It is hard to believe that there are less than 25 days left in the school year!  

We can do this! 💜

Enjoy the video below!

April Adventures

Happy Vacation week!

Thank you to all the families that were able to join us for the author share!  What a beautiful turnout of happy and proud people!

Last week we started our space/patterns in the sky unit in science.  Students brainstormed things they know and want to know about space.  Then they created beautiful galaxy pictures with oil pastels.  

What do words like plane, fine, tube, and cone have in common?  They are all words that have a magic e on the end.  Magic e words have a vowel, consonant, vowel-e.  The e makes the vowel say its name! We are practicing swapping the short vowel sound into the long vowel sound like in the word fat add an e and it becomes fate.

We also began a new writing unit and this unit will be centered around Opinion writing.  We began by reading a beautiful book titled Birds.  In this book, the author poses a thought if birds were to make marks in the sky wherever they flew what would they look like? So we painted beautiful scenes of what we thought in our opinion it would look like!  We will explore what it means to give our opinion and how to support it with details and reasons!

During ECO, we have been making spring observations and touching on the water cycle seeing that there is so much water during these spring months.  On Friday we had a lovely celebration with a campfire and we each were able to make a S'more! We gathered around the fire telling stories, enjoying the songbirds, and feeling a strong sense of community.  Students were safe and responsible around the fire.  

We will be diving into the last chunk of the year with some great learning with new units in Math, Reading, and our Opinion writing unit!  

See you all soon!

Love, Mrs. Poor

 

Please come share in all of the amazing research that all the first graders have taken part in on Wednesday 4/13/22 from 8:30-9am. We understand that not all families will be able to attend.  Thank you!!

Book Fair Volunteers Needed!

    

 Book Fair Volunteers Needed!  

The Scholastic Book Fair will be coming to Richmond Elementary School April 4-8.  To make this a successful event, Mrs. Wood is looking for some volunteers to help out.  Jobs include running the cash register, being a shopping assistant, setting up, and closing up.  All volunteers need the fill out the appropriate forms from the district located here before they can volunteer.  To sign up please click the following link or talk to Mrs. Wood in the Library. 

https://bit.ly/3D85BfG

Thank you!!

Spring has sprung...kind of

       🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

Hello!

As I write this post I see a blanket of white outdoors - 3 inches to be exact!  The class predicted that we would be done with snow but mother nature had a different plan.  

This week we had the pleasure of celebrating the spring equinox with Maestra Moutlon's First-grade Spanish immersion class.  We gathered around, sang songs, shared ideas & collaborated, listened to a puppet show on bird songs, and went for a spring scavenger hunt!  We had so much fun being together.  

This week we had our first mindful tea time.  We tried loose leaf rose tea with our new teapot!  We gathered in a circle and were guided by a prerecorded mindfulness instructor.  She invited us to drink our tea and to acknowledge where we felt our tea linger in our bodies.  Everyone did well with practicing their manners while trying a new taste.  Next time we may add a little more honey to our tea to make it a little sweeter.  Thank you all for bringing in a mug! 

Enjoy this lovely video and I hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

💜

Ticks!

 

Please be aware that we go out to the woods every Wednesday.  Please check your child for ticks that afternoon just to be safe.

March Discoveries

 

We had a great week together in first grade!  

This week we continued our work practicing words that have a beginning blend.  This coming week we will wrap up blends by practicing with words that have an ending blend.  We also made some nice progress on our animal research.  Friday we took time to learn how to draw our animal.  These will be used for the cover of our books!  They came out so nice!!  

On Woodsy Wednesday we headed out on a glorious morning to the field and woods.  We took a nature walk to look for seeds, had a blast searching the grounds for tracks, and discovered it was a perfect day for tracking! We found possum, raccoon, squirrel, mouse, fox, and bird tracks! There are some great pictures in the video below!

Friday we began talking about plants.  This will be a combination of finishing up our organism unit as well as starting our perennial tea garden project.  I am very excited to share all that I am learning from the class that I am currently taking this semester.  Please send in a mug if you can for your student to leave for the remaining time at school.  This will be used for the mindfulness tea times we will be starting. 

Nurse Hadley has taught two health lessons and one more to go this coming week.  She has talked about germs and fire safety so far.  Students took home a sheet with a grid on it to help them design a plan on how to exit their house in case of an emergency  - this could be a great conversation to have at home together! 

Be well, everybody!

Second week in March

 

Dear Families,

This week in our word work time we focused on blends. A blend contains two consonants but each consonant makes its own sound. For example, bl in the word block is a blend.  

We are very close to completing our animal research projects in Writing. This is very exciting and we will get to create a beautiful cover page for it when they are done.  First graders love to paint so I try to incorporate it when possible! Speaking of painting, we began our new door mural and we will continue to add to it this week!  We also painted hearts and wrote inspiring quotes that will bring others light if they are in need.  We will hang these hearts up in the hallway this week!

In Science, we began the last bend of our Organisms unit.  We began to discuss the fascinating topic of Biomimicry!  Biomimicry is when we learn something from nature that helps solve a human problem or need and try to mimic it.  First graders loved guessing where different objects came from like swim fins, glider suits, and velcro were a few we talked about.  

In Math, we solved crayon puzzles and played card games to practice making 10 - we really want these 10 facts solid!  Lastly, we ended the week with a celebration of our 120 hours of reading with a tent and stuffy party - I may still be recovering from this but it was a lot of fun!  🎪

Have a wonderful week ahead!

💜 Mrs. Poor