The Legend of the Poinsettia

The poinsettia is a flower used as decoration here in the United States near the Christmas season. The plant comes to us originally from Mexico. We read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola in which a young Mexican has no gift to offer but some green weeds that have red flowers.

Then we all made paper poinsettias!

St. Lucia Day

In Sweden December 13th is called St. Lucia Day. The oldest girl in each family dresses is a white robe with a wreath of candles on her head. She brings rolls and cookies to family members. The candles help fill the dark winter days with light. You'll see that everyone made their own wreaths with (paper) candles!

We also read a book called The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren. In Sweden, a tomten is a good-natured elf that lives on farms and helps with farm chores. At night he watches over the children while they sleep so no harm comes.

Saying Goodbye

Today we said goodbye to Miss Carey, our student teacher. She gave our class a book by our author of the month, Jan Brett. The book is one we hadn't read yet called Home For Christmas.

She read the book to the class...

and then we gave her our presents. We gave her a teacher book bag that each child signed in permanent marker! I asked each child to also write a short note to Miss Carey telling why she was a great teacher. Here's a sample! They wrote such kind things to Miss Carey and she will be missed!

Winter Holidays!

It's that time of year again! The weather is getting colder and students are talking about Christmas. In class we've begun learning about winter holiday customs and traditions in other places in the world. Our first stop was the Netherlands. On December 5th, the custom there is for children to place their wooden shoes on the windowsill for "Sinterklaas" fill. Sinterklaas is much like our Santa Claus. He brings presents and treats to children. Each child hopes for presents, fruits, nuts and candies, but those that are naughty might find coal! Everyone in our class found fruit and candy! Phew!

Giving Thanks!

While learning about the First Thanksgiving, each child made their own Pilgrim village. Each was excited to bring this special project home...as you can see in their faces! I loved reading their writing telling what each was thankful for...moms, dads, siblings and a dog! I love the pictures of them hard at work!

A Visit to our Police Department

On Wednesday we walked to the Hinesburg Police Department! What a beautiful day for a walk! And what a beautiful, new building! We were a few minutes early so I took a class photo!

Chief Frank showed us the security system...

...and the locker room...

...and the holding cell! There was just a bench, a sink and a stainless steel toilet. It was as if they'd never seen a toilet!

Check out these cute jailbirds!

Future police officer?

Bats and Moons

The week before Halloween kids are abuzz with the anticipation of trick or treating and costumes and candy! It seemed the perfect time to learn about...bats! I read several books about bats and asked the question: Do you think bats are cute or creepy? Before learning about bats I was surprised at how many children thought bats were creepy and they were afraid of bats! Ask your child to tell you about the Bumblebee bat! It is the smallest bat in the world with its body measuring approximately 1 inch long and a wing span of only 6 inches.

I read this book about the Bumblebee bat...

...and showed them pictures of the Bumblebee bat...







...and by the time we took a vote, more children thought bats were cute and not creepy! And they all thought bats were beneficial! They learned that the little brown bat (found here in Vermont!) can eat as many as 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour!

Each child voted and then tallied the results and created a graph to show the class results. Then they made a bat to attach to their graph!

In addition to studying bats, your children created the most beautiful moon paintings-each with a bat! They are hanging in the hall outside the classroom, but when they come home I bet you'll want to hang them in a very special place! They were so serious while mixing the shades of blue and I think each and every painting is a work of art! Bravo!

Voting Day!

While Tuesday was voting day all around the country, kids were busy voting here at HCS as well! Each class that chose to participate visited the library which had been transformed into a polling place...complete with "I voted!" stickers! Each child had to state their name when entering the polling place and was given a ballot. Then they went to their private polling station voted for the candidate of their choice by choosing his picture. Then they deposited their ballots into the box. First graders voted for governor and lieutenant governor.  You'll see in the pictures that we had some pretty proud voters when all was said and done!

FUN-O-Ween!

Fun-O-Ween was just that...FUN! As you'll see in the pictures, there were lots of smiles and laughs! Our class began the afternoon with the bean bag toss! You'll see the targets (which were almost as much fun as the actual tossing!) and smiling, costumed faces as they waited for a turn. After bean bag toss, we headed to "Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin." Children were given a nose, a quick spin, and then they marched up to pin a nose. Then we marched down to Mrs. Fay's music room where the beginning band played music for freeze dance. The first graders danced so quickly that many of my pictures were a blur! After freeze dance, we headed to the library story corner where Ms. Stanley read us two spooky stories-in the dark! Yikes! Next our class played Ghost In the Graveyard...which is just a fancy name for Red Light/Green Light. They are very speedy on their knees! After that we went to play musical chairs. It turns out that our class didn't even need to take away any chairs to make this game fun! Our last station was right back in our room coloring Halloween pictures! While they colored we used the fish and underwater explorer props to take some pictures! The last picture is a group shot of the first grade teachers in our book character costumes! I hope you had as much fun that night trick-or-treating! BOO!

Peeling Apples!

Yesterday your children helped the PiE group peel apples for the Harvest Dinner! PiE is our parent group and PiE stands for Partners in Education. To prepare the apple crisp, PiE parent Doug Stewart asked student helpers to wash and peel apples.  Some students washed while others learned how to put the apples on the fancy peeling machines! As the machines peel, they also slice and core! Who knew peeling apples could be so much fun?

Word Sorts

Each day your child participates in a Fundations lesson. Fundations is our phonics/spelling program. Our whole group lessons include letter/sound review, sound dictation, word dictation and sentence dictation. In addition, proper letter formation is taught and encouraged. Each week your child is given a word sort. Children cut out their word cards, read each card and then sort them according to the spelling pattern being taught. Different groups of kids have different sorts based on student needs. The activities are the same for all, though. Each day students read the words and sort. Depending on the day, children may complete a Draw and Label activity or play a game with their words or read a passage similar words.

Here are some pictures of children working with their sort cards!

Read Aloud

I took some pictures today of the class listening to Miss Carey, our student teacher, read a story. I love their expressions and the intensity with which they listen to stories! Our author of the month is Bill Peet and Miss Carey is reading Merle, the High Flying Squirrel!  Bill Peet is a wonderful story teller and his stories hold the interest of children while incorporating rich vocabulary.  If you've never had the opportunity to read any of his stories, I encourage you to pick a few out at the library!

Community

Our theme at the beginning of the year is Community. We work hard to build a working classroom community that demonstrates the school's core values of sharing, trust, respect, responsibility and belonging. I read many books to the class about school, getting along with others and how to make and keep friends. After working together to build our classroom community, the class began to learn about Community Helpers. Our studies will include firefighters, garbage collectors, mail carriers, police officers, dentists, and construction workers. Each helper uses special tools and equipment. This week we spent some time learning about firefighters.

Today we had a visit from several of Hinesburg's volunteer fire department.  The firefighters talked to the first grade classes about fire safety and put on fire equipment including the noisy breathing masks.  Children were able to see how a firefighter might look in an emergency!  Afterward, each class was able to go outside and look inside a fire truck and see all of the equipment used by our firefighters.

Take a look at your children as they learned about fire safety!

Hard At Work!

The first few days are so busy and it's nice to take a minute to do some quiet seat work. Here you see kids working on the first day of school books that came home...after the first day! It turns out that to do high quality work, it takes a little more time! You'll also see children hard at work using math materials and writing some of their very first pieces of writing. Such serious faces...such concentration!

Back To School!

Here are some pictures from our first few days back at school! It's always exciting to start a new year! It was hot and sunny, but not too hot to spend some extra time on the playground! Look at those happy faces!

Field Days Fun!

Today we woke to a dreary, rainy day and I think we all wondered if field days could happen outside. But the sky cleared and we shifted our schedule by an hour to allow for a little drying outside and the day was a huge hit! We had snack before our events began and everyone changed into bathing suits in preparation for the water slide. Each class rotated through a series of stations with various activities. Our stations included jump roping, hula hooping, relay races, wet sponge toss, playground/face painting, and finally...water slide! Our last station was water slide. It was still quite chilly and at the end they each got a rinse with the hose water! We all know how cold water direct from the hose feels and I cringed watching them as the soap and mud were washed off! We all went inside and they changed into warm, dry clothing! Our picnic lunch was held inside (it started to pour as soon as we came inside) and we enjoyed hamburgers and hot dogs together-or home lunch! The day finished with a band in the gym. It was a rock band and was a bit loud so half my class had their hands clamped over their ears. I sent those kids back to the room to get headphones to block some of the volume. It was a sight to see...rocking out to the music with headphones! It turned out to be a great day, but I'll be surprised if you don't have kids who crash early! It was a busy, fun day! Check out the pictures...I love the facial expressions on the water slide!

Dissecting Flowers and the Lamb Lady

We've had a very busy week! On Wednesday, the half day, we spent some time dissecting flowers. In small groups student were given a flower, a work mat and a magnifying glass. I asked them to dissect their flower and find the following parts: pistil, stamen, petals, and stem. Each type of flower had distinctly different pistils and stamen so after they were dissected, each group had the chance to wander from group to group and observe each others work. It was pretty interesting. The next day they completed a flower diagram with each of the observed parts. Earlier in our plant unit we took apart a Fava bean that had been soaking in water. There was a small embryo (the future root/plant) already growing inside the Fava bean. They learned about the seed coat, the embryo and the cotyledon. We're also growing some classroom plants from seeds we planted just a few weeks ago. Plants are so much fun for first graders to learn about! Check out the pictures from the flower dissection.



In addition, we continue to practice for the play and learn about farm animals. Friday was the day the "Lamb Lady" visited! (Also known as Ms. Knox, a reading specialist here). It was very exciting because when we were at Shelburne Farms, the lambs were not our focus and we didn't have the opportunity to spend much time with them. There was much excitement about her arrival! We felt it best to meet the lambs on the tennis court in case they decided first graders were too much and tried to make a run for it! They were very sweet and seemed to like first graders after all! Each child had the opportunity to feed a lamb a bottle and most of them gave it a try. The lambs are just getting used to being on a lead and every child who grabbed the rope felt great success until the lamb decided to go its own way! It was hard to tell who was walking whom! Ms. Knox also brought a spinning wheel and a big bag of wool. Each child was able to take a fistful of wool home! A very exciting day!

Chicks Visit

Last week Ivy asked if she could bring her chicks to school on her share day...how could I say no to that? So on Tuesday, Ivy's chicks made a visit! Her mom came with three new chicks and one older chick. We made a welcoming circle on the rug so the chicks could visit with each of us. They made the rounds and many children tried to pick them up. The chicks are pretty spry and definitely made it known when they wanted to be put down! They were fluffy and cute and almost everyone wanted to bring chicks home that day! A very special thank you to Ivy and her mom for sharing their chicks with us!

A Day at the Farm!

What a blustery day on the farm! Our trip to Shelburne Farms began with rain and a cold wind. Thankfully everyone had rubber boots (thanks to those who sent in extra gear to share) and some sort of rain coat.  It helped keep the water and wind out!  Even so, it was pretty chilly down by the lake at the dairy barn! But we soon got to work on the farm and everyone warmed up...and it stopped raining! We split three classes into four groups so you will see a mixture of children in the pictures, some of whom aren't a part of our class, but today we folded them into our group!

First we met our Shelburne Farms teacher leaders Christie and Megan.  They wanted to get to know our names and what each of us already knew about farms.  It was cold sitting out in the rain, so the group was quiet...very quiet!  Then we headed to the barn where the cows were eating silage.  Cows nudge the silage away as they eat, so the little farmers used brooms, shovels and even their feet to move the silage closer.  You'll see in the pictures that the cows were friendly and everyone had the opportunity to pet a cow!

After that, we walked up to the heifer barn.  This group of cows had been sick but were recovering away from the herd.  They were eating hay, but again the cows had nudged it away and the little farmers pushed the hay back for the cows to keep eating.  There was a small pen of sheep that were momentarily distracting to our little farmers, but the cows needed their feed and the hay flew!

Then it was time to go milk a cow-by hand!  Everyone had a chance to give it a try and I think they'll tell you it was easier than they thought it would be!  When they weren't milking, they were grooming the cow!  What a lucky lady!

Lastly, we went to visit the calves in their own little barn.  Each calf was in a pen of its own.  There was also another small pen of the cutest little lambs!  Some of the calves were only a few days old.  One big building of cuteness!  The kids were in heaven and spent quite a bit of time petting and talking to the calves and lambs!  It was hard to tear them away but it was time to get on the bus to go back to the education barn for lunch.

We had a quiet lunch in the education barn and then headed back out to visit with more farm animals.  But first we saw the cheese making room!  They were in the process of making cheese and we watched through the big window!  Of course there was some cheese to taste!  There is an area for the kids to try "making cheese" of their own and they played for a few minutes.

Then we were on the move again...over to visit the lambs.  This time we stood in a circle and our legs made a "fence" for the lamb in the middle!  It kept trying to escape but kids are quicker!  Then we went to visit the goats...pig...donkeys...horses...and chickens.

All in all it was a great day!  There were some very tired children-and adults-on the bus ride home!

The Little Mermaid

This week we had the pleasure of seeing our Middle School friends perform in the HCS production of The Little Mermaid! When our school productions have characters that might be scary to the younger audience members, we spend some time prepping them! The Sea Witch, played by 8th grader Anna, came to an assembly of kindergarten and first graders the day before the performance. The young students met Anna and watched while she was transformed into the Sea Witch complete with wild hair and tentacles. Then Wednesday we spent our afternoon watching this wonderful performance! I hope your child came home to tell you how much they enjoyed the show! Check out the pictures of our amazing actors and the beautiful costumes!

Four Winds Sound

This week we had a visit from our Four Winds volunteers, Heather and Susan! The topic was "sound". The class had the opportunity to explore sound waves. They used film canister shakers filled with things that produced different sounds to see if they could match those with the same sound. They also used tuning forks (and hand claps) to try and make sugar "dance" on plastic wrap covered cans. They were really excited to see the sugar dance when they brought the tuning forks close. One activity may bring back memories...they went into the hall to "talk" to each other using an old-fashioned "telephone" made with a long string and two soup cans! They also used unusual contraptions made with string and metal coat hangers to hear how sound travels when the hanger is tapped with a metal spoon. Our afternoon finished by enjoying a crunchy, noisy snack! By covering their ears while chewing, the sound becomes amplified! What a fun afternoon!

Life-Size Penguins!

Brr, it's cold! While it is in fact cold here in Vermont, we took a virtual trip to Antarctica to study penguins! Our math unit focuses on penguins as a tool for learning to measure. We are studying four specific penguins: the Little Blue, the Rockhopper, the King Penguin and the Chinstrap. One of most surprising things we learned about penguins is that they don't all live in cold places although they do all live in the Southern Hemisphere! We learned the height and weight of each penguin as well as what they eat and who their predators are in their habitats. As we introduced each penguin they used their measuring tapes to measure a piece of yarn equal to the height of that penguin. After learning about the four penguins, each child chose the penguin they wanted to draw and paint. Their penguin had to be life-sized so they used their tape measures and marked the height of their penguin on the paper before they drew. Check out all the hard work that went into creating these wonderful penguins!

 

After the penguins were painted and cut out, I put them out in the hall for all to see! Check out our penguin parade!

Valentines Day

Today we celebrated Valentines Day with cards, smiles and cookies!  As you'll see in the pictures, they were very focused while opening their cards and all you could hear was "Thank you!" as they read the messages of friendship!  They opened cards and then we ate cookies!  It was a day filled with love and friendship!

100th Day of School!

Today is the 100th day of school!  It doesn't seem possible that 100 days have gone by already!  The projects were a lot of fun to share!  We toured the primary wing and saw many creative projects.  Here's a peak at some of the projects.


After talking about what it would be like to be 100 years old, everyone made a portrait of their 100-year-old self! Complete with white hair, wrinkles, extreme hair loss and in some cases...EAR HAIR!!! Then they made a sort of "bucket list" of the things they'd like to do before they turn 100!  Take a look...

From 100th Day writing

Before I am 100 I will...I will get a job.  I will go to the Olympics.  I will get better at running.  I will be a dentist.  I will be a vet.  I will not be a vet for snakes.  I will learn how to write every word.  I will be a baseball player.  I will learn how to be a fast skater.  I will be a chef.

Here's another...

From 100th Day writing

Before I am 100 I will...play soccer.  I will play basketball.  I will skate...get married...go to college...play baseball...shoot a bow and arrow.

And finally...

From 100th Day writing

Before I am 100 I will...I will play soccer. I will go to China. I will have two children. I will work at NRG. 

I wish I had a magic crystal ball to see what 100 looks like for each one of them...who knows?!

Martin Luther King, Jr Day!

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr day, we spent some learning about him. I read several biographies and we had many discussions about what makes us all the same...despite our outward differences. You can see a picture of our hands in a pile. We were comparing the many, many shades of skin that makes each of us unique.

From Martin Luther King Day

After watching a grainy, black and white clip of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, the children wrote their own dreams for the world. Here is an example of the cover...

From Martin Luther King Day

Here is one child's dream for the world...

From Martin Luther writing

My dream for the world is...that things in the world are treated fair. My dream is that people stop littering. My dream is that people stop killing animals. 

And another...

From Martin Luther writing

My dream for the world is...people stop littering.  My dream is people start being nice.  My dream is for people to stop being bullies.  My dream is for people to have enough food.

And one more...

From Martin Luther writing

My dream for the world is...that people have enough food.  My dream for the world is that people can have homes.  My dream for the world is that people have clothes.

What kind, generous, and peaceful children!