Earth Day at FSB!

We celebrated Earth Day at FSB on Thursday, April 17th.  Our day kicked off with a delightful All School Convocation where we heard the Orchestra,  The Quaketones & Pleiades,  Little Friends Singers, and watched the lovely Ballet Trio.  Convocations at Friends are always a treasure and this one didn't disappoint!

After convocation, we met up with a group of 7th graders who would serve as our buddies for the bulk of the day.  Our first activity was to use recycled materials to create a project called "Recycled Blooms."  We had been collecting colorful boxes, small lids from bottles, and straws for the past several weeks.  Using these materials we got to work:

Visit the Art Show beginning on Thursday to see all of our Recycled Blooms!

After, we headed outside for some chalk drawings:

Next up was lunch and recess with our seventh grade friends and then we headed back to room 230 for........... Worms!! 

We enjoyed the story Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin:  

We also watched this short video about how worms are helpful and how to create your own worm farm!  

http://pbskids.org/dragonflytv/show/wormfarm.html

As much as I thought it would be fun to create our own worm farm in 1A, I thought creating an edible one might be even more exciting! 

Using the following ingredients, we got to work creating our own edible worm farms:

• chocolate pudding
• Cool Whip
• crushed Oreos (minus the frosting middles)
• gummy worms

Here's some photos of us making our worm farms, our finished products, and a few friends in 1A EATING WORMS!  

Maybe you can make a real worm farm at home!  

It was a terrific Earth Day at FSB!  

First graders what can you do to help our planet?  Post your idea so everyone can read it!

 

Top Secret Mystery!

We enjoyed a second Mystery Reader visit last week.  Here were our clues as we tried to figure out this next mystery........
1.  I love art and being creative.
2.  I have long blonde hair.
3.  I moved to Maryland 6 years ago.
4.  I used to teach preschool and taught someone in this class.
5.  I recently had a baby girl!

That last clue confirmed it for sure....... Miss Angela, Eva's babysitter was our next Mystery Reader!

Miss Angela read a book we enjoyed at the beginning of the year titled, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  by Carol McCloud.  

This book explains that everyone has an invisible bucket.  The key to filling your own bucket is to fill someone else's!  We've worked hard to be bucket fillers in room 230 all year long.  Hearing this book again was a great refresher.  

After reading the story, Miss Angela told us she had buckets for each of us and 14 slips of paper.  Our task was to write something kind about each of our classmates and ourself and put them in each other's buckets.  Eva helped to pass out the buckets and we got to work being bucket fillers!

Thanks, Miss Angela, for a great Mystery Reader Visit!  

First graders, how has someone filled your bucket lately or how have you filled someone else's bucket? Post a comment to share with all of us.  

We only have a few more Mystery Readers to go...... Where has our year gone!?

Doubles Plus One!

Take a look at our Educreations from today's math lesson.  Students in my math class have been learning about the doubles and doubles plus one addition strategies.  Let them teach you how to use the doubles plus one strategy:

Eliza:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/eliza2/20242679/?s=ViaBUU&ref=appemail

Lizzy:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/lizzy-doubles-3/20242783/?s=2NhYVr&ref=appemail

Lukas:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/lukas-doubles/20242439/?s=ET2gBA&ref=appemail

Kennedy:
http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/kennedy-doubles/20242320/?s=S0W46P&ref=appemail

Great work, first grade mathematicians!  Mr. Hanes and I were very proud of your creative thinking and the resilience you showed as you were working today.  

Check back next week for two more friends' videos on using this strategy (they didn't quite finish today).

A Mystery in 1A!

We always get so excited when our Mystery Reader envelope appears in our classroom.  When we saw it hanging in our room last week, the children quickly pointed it out to me!

Our clues for this Mystery Reader were:

• I have brown hair.
• I have 2 kid.
• I am a teacher.  

Many of our friends in 1A was SURE this was their own teacher after this clue.  They concluded that Disco was my second kid!

• One of my favorite foods is tacos.
• I LOVE to play Just Dance 2014 with my babes!!

Some of the kids have figured out that there's only a few families who haven't surprised us as Mystery Readers thus far.  Francis concluded it had to be his mom or Dylan's, but Dylan said it couldn't be his since his mom. isn't a teacher.  This sealed it and Francis was quite sure his mom would be our reader.  

He was correct..... however he didn't know his younger sister, Felice,  would also show up to share some time in our room!  

Ms. S read The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by A. Wolf:

Many friends in 1A seem to agree that the Wolf's point of view might actually be the REAL point of view!  

Ms. S also read The 3 Ninja Pigs by Corey Rosen Schwartz:

After listening to these versions of the familiar story, we enjoyed some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies..... YUM!  It was another fabulous Mystery Reader visit! 

First Graders, which 3 little pig story do you like best?  Post a comment to share with all of us.  

New Adventure

As I shared this week, our family is getting ready to embark on a new adventure!  After calling Baltimore home for almost 20 years, we've decided it's time for a move.  In October, we'll be packing our things and moving just outside of Denver, Colorado (Castle Rock to be exact)!

When I told the kids on Friday, many of them asked questions about our new house so I told them I'd post a few pictures.

We are having a new house built, so when we were there it looked like this:

Just a snow covered lot! We're very excited about the open space behind our house!

 Here's a picture of what the outside will look like although our house will likely be a different color:

And here's one of the inside of the model home:

We'll have lots of room for guests, so Mason hopes his friends and their families will come to visit!  

First graders, how many different houses have you lived in or how many times have you moved?  Did you know that when I was growing up, I lived in 5 different states?  I was born in Minnesota but then we lived in California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Maryland!  We moved a bunch.  Post a comment to share with us how many times you've moved.

I Wanna Rock!

We rocked out to the third, fourth and fifth grade rock bands during our assembly on Friday!  Here's a few pictures of first grade rocking out in our PJs!: