Hello First Grade Famililes!
Happy Earth Day! I hope you enjoyed your weekend and took a moment to think about what you can do to help our environment this year. Every year I try to take on something new, consistently using reusable grocery bags one year, changing away from the use of plastic another year. This year we planted more edibles so that some of our food isn't being trucked or shipped from so far. I can't wait to harvest. I hope you are having conversations at home about what can be your family's part. Please email me and share!
We have also been using the word gratitude lately. With our class councils we share appreciations for friends, things others did that made our week work. These are specific to each person, but the concept of being grateful is a little different. The class calendar we have this year shares little paragraphs of people from around the world and this has been making us realized things we have and may have not noticed to appreciate: warm water for showers, being able to turn on a tap for water, having a doctor readily when you need one. We have begun using the concept of what we are grateful for, or feel lucky to have in our life, for our morning share. It has been lovely to hear what students are aware of. What are you grateful in your life?
The homework keeps coming in! The class was very interested in Silas sharing a family project of making a marionette from scratch. He showed how this special puppet moves and the class asked many questions as to how it was made. We have been curious about how things come together to move or work, so this was very interesting.
Last week we also went on a hike with our 8th grade buddies. It was nice to have a moment smelling the trees and seeing lots of greenery. The 8th graders brought a yummy treat- watermelon! We had a nice time together and also noticed lots of cool plants.
Another interest that we have been spending some time on are clocks and how to tell time. We began by journaling about these two questions:
This work takes time. It can be hard to remember which hand does which job and all the nuances of what the numbers represent, since each number on the face of a clock represents more than one thing. For example, depending on which hand is pointing to the 3, it can mean 3 or 15. That's confusing! We have been using this time lapse (below) to remind us how these two hand work together and also stopping it at any given point to test if we can figure out what time it is. This is a great activity at home: What time is it? What makes you know that you are right?
Clocks are also machines and we are simultaneously investigating how they function. We looked at two videos this week about grandfather clocks to investigate this special time piece. The students were amazed that it doesn't run on batteries or electricity, rather on gravity. We will continue to investigate how simple machines, like the pulleys in the grandfather clock, can help things work.
Two of the projects we have been focusing on most this week are our settings and animals. I plan to put more examples of their work up soon, so stayed tuned! Here are photos of the rest of the posters from last week. We had a great discussion about deadlines, how they feel and how to keep yourself on track to get work done in a timely manner. The posters were a great example of this. After the deadline of Friday, friends shared strategies that work, like keeping a list of tasks so you don't do things you didn't mean to do, sitting alone and telling others you need to work. This is an important life lesson that we will continue to realize. What deadlines do we have each day? The students could name a few, all in the time before you get out the door to go to school!
Thanks for reading and thank you for sharing your creative students! Love, Jennifer
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