This Week's Highlights

Hello First Grade Families

Highlights From Our Week:

Skill Reinforcing Games- coin knowledge and skills, prediction, number patterns, addition, making words from letters rolled, writing stories together.

Avery and Risa's Sea Mammal presentation:

Friday we were lucky to have Avery and Risa come to visit and give us a presentation about sea mammals.  Risa even called a trainer and were able to talk with her and a sea lion named Jim Fin!  The students were facinated by the models of a sea lion and dolphin skull.  They had lots of great questions and we learned a lot.  I will include some facts here, but I am sure your child will tell you more!

Mammal features: (we summarized this ourselves first!) are warm blooded, feed their babies their own milk, have live births and hair or fur.

The National Marine Mammal Organization practices husbandry, which is caring for the animals and examining their health.  They do research and care for sea lions and dolphins and work closely with the Navy.

Sea Lions:
Can swim up to 1,000 feet deep.
Can stay under water up ti 5 minutes to fish before taking a breath.
Bark
Males: 1,000 lbs and 7'
Females 220lbs 6'
Have external ears
Can sit up leaning on their flippers
Have approximately the same amount of teeth as us.
Pups born in June/July


Seals:
Internal ears
Make a grunting sound
lay on the ground and wiggle, instead of up on their flippers.

Dolphins:
Moms swim fast and their babies, who cannot swim fast, get caught up in their stream to keep up.
Killer whales are actually dolphins
Can chose when to take a breath or not, instead of feeling like they ran out of breath and have to breath.
Have 88-112 teeth
The shape of their head (melon) is what allows them to use echo-location to sense things at 100 feet away.
Dolphins are born flukes first.

After watching the video of the trainer working with hand signals with Jim Fin, Silas said, "My dog would never do all that!".  The students were very impressed with how this sea lion responded to the hand signals.

Ammending the soil in our planters:

We used the worm casting, peat moss and micro-organisms to add to the soild we have and make it rich and ready for our plants next week.  The students were practicing lots of teamwork and communication to make sure all the jobs were done thoroughly.

Enjoy your weekend.  Remember, next Tuesday we are off to see the Chinese Theater!

Love, Jennifer