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Luck 'O The Irish!

Saint Joan of Arc was all Irish during March. First graders enjoyed reading many books about leprechauns throughout the month. The students were also challenged to build creative leprechaun traps in order to "snatch up" one of the leprechauns that visited our classroom. It was so exciting to see how creative the kids got with these traps, and how much they enjoyed the project. Many of the traps had green colors, rainbows, pots of gold, Lucky Charms, candy, etc. GREAT JOB FIRST GRADERS! I think we have some future engineers in our class. In the end, we weren't able to catch any of these sneaky creatures, but we sure had fun trying. And boy, did they get ahold of our classroom and destroy it. We had green paint and footprints EVERYWHERE, green glitter, chairs and desks overturned, pencil containers spilt, etc. As a class, we are determined to catch these little fellas' next year! :)

During March, we also incorporated some green cooking as part of our measuring unit in math. The students enjoyed making shamrock jello jigglers and leprechaun pie. A big thank you to all the volunteers who helped with the cooking and providing materials.

Finally, on St. Patrick's Day Saint Joan of Arc was fortunate enough to send their Kindergarten, First, and Second grades downtown to march in the parade. The students did a FABULOUS job marching, smiling, chanting, waving, and representing the best school in the city-St. Joan of Arc. I am sure the chant, "SJA, ALL THE WAY!" was stuck in the students' heads for days! A big thank you to all of our parent volunteers who came along to make the day so successful.

Click below to watch a slideshow of highlights from the day!

January and February Mystery Guests!

Dr. Seuss Birthday Celebration

We had a great time celebrating Dr. Seuss' Birthday today. The first graders each brought in some of their favorite books to read and share with their classmates. Miss Scheidler's mom came in to help us make green eggs & ham and "Cat in the Hat" hats. The students also had fun doing word searches for rhyming Dr. Seuss words. After sampling the eggs and ham, the students wrote about why they did or did not like the food. The day ended with Miss Scheidler reading her favorite Seuss book, Oh, The Places You Will Go!

*A big thank you to Mrs. Young, Mrs. Scheidler (my mom), and Ms. Carolyn.

Hundredth Day of School

We had a FABULOUS time celebrating the 100th day of school in February. We made patterned necklaces using 100 Fruit Loops, went on a scavenger hunt around the room for 100 stickers, wrote what we would do with 100 dollars, and a variety of other exciting activities centered around "100!" The first graders had a blast showing their understanding of "100." What a fun day! Only eighty more days until summer...

Pumpkin Week Video

Newsletter 10/22/09

Here is this week's newsletter. The formatting changes when converted to the blog, but all of the information should be here.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQ57PraJzShmZGQ3NGJxZHFfNmNuOHpramZy&hl=en

Apple Orchard Video Pictures

Make sure your volume is turned up!

Pumpkin Week

PUMPKIN WEEK!

In first grade, we will be doing a variety of activities dealing with pumpkins. Here is a sneak peek at our schedule of activities.

Monday:

• We read Hidden Pumpkins and various other pumpkin books during read aloud today. We then made our very own jack-o-lanterns using geometrical shapes.
• We will be graphing the shapes we used as a class onTuesday.
• After drawing our jack-o-lanterns, we named them and wrote a make-believe story about them. Check these out on display in our classroom.

Tuesday:

• Pumpkin math story problems (using addition and subtraction)
• Discussion of the growth and stages of pumpkins.

Wednesday:

• Pumpkin estimation- estimate the height, circumference, weight, number of vertical lines, and number of seeds in our class pumpkins. The students will estimate the circumference of the pumpkin and cut a piece of yarn that they think will fit exactly around the pumpkin. Then we will test the string and graph whether our strings were too short, too long, or just right. The students will then hunt around the room for other objects with the same circumference or width.
• The Great Pumpking Line Up- we will line up the pumpkins according to height, and then according to how heavy we think they are. Then, we will weigh the pumpkins and talk about why size is not the only determining factor in pumpkin weight.

Thursday:

• In groups of five, the students will make a list of adjectives that describe their pumpkin. Then, as a class we will read each groups attributes and try to guess which pumpkin is being described, based off of the adjectives written.

Friday:

• Pumpkin Carving! Thank you to our wonderful parent volunteers who have offered to come in and help us with this activity! We are so lucky to have such great help!
• Last week, we had a jack-o-lantern drawing contest in first grade. We voted on one winner per table group. These jack-o-lantern sketches will help us with our carving on Friday.
• Pumpkin seed cooking and tasting! Yummy!

Welcome & Apple Orchard

WELCOME!

Welcome to our first grade blog for the 2009-2010 school year! What a great year we have been having so far. The students have learned so much in the past two months, and we are all looking forward to what the rest of the school year has to offer. I am so proud of the effort the first graders have been putting into their school work and in getting to know each other. It is a true joy to see their bright, smiling faces every morning. Feel free to visit this first grade blog regularly to view pictures, samples of student work, stories, and get a sneak peek into what is happening in the first grade classroom.

TUTTLE APPLE ORCHARD

On Tuesday, we took our first field trip with the second grade class. We went to Tuttle Apple Orchard in Greenfield, IN. The first graders did an excellent job of listening to our tour guide and learned so much on this trip! We learned about different types of apples, how the apple orchard is run, how bees pollinate the apple trees, how apple cider is made, and where ALL the apples go when they are picked.

The boys walking to

see how/where apple

cider is made.

The first graders LOVED to see how the good apples were separated from the bad apples. Note all the ribbons in the background for awards the Tuttle Apple Orchard has won!


Oh no! We came to a dead end in the agrimaze! What do we do now?

Learning all about the different
types of apples and what they need to grow.

We loved getting to walk

down the row and pick

out our very own apples!

The first graders were also able to sample the yummy cider and pick four apples to bring home (or eat on the bus!).

Here the students are learning all
about the economics of apples.