Getting Ready For Grandparents Luncheon

We are excited for Grandparent's luncheon next Monday.  Please share with your child's grandparent that we are inviting the Starfish Grandparents into our classroom at 10:30 for a classroom share.  The luncheon begins at 11:05 in the cafeteria. If your child does not have a grandparent joining them next Monday for lunch please know that we have talked about partnering up with a friend's grandparents for the morning.  

We read one of our favorite picture books How to Babysit a Grandpa which inspired us to write a class book for our favorite starfish grandparents.  

Our class book that the starfish have created is titled How to Babysit a Grandparent.  Each first grader came up with their own page and ideas to babysit a grandparent.  Some of the pages include:

• How to entertain a grandparent
• How to teach a grandparent how to use an Ipad
• How to teach a grandparent how to play baseball
• How to teach a grandparent to play video games
• How to teach a grandparent to sing a song
• How to teach a grandparent to play an instrument
• How to show a grandparent that you love them
• How to make a grandparent laugh

We will have copies of the book to bring home for the Grandparents who are unable to join us this year! The kids are very excited to share this comical book!

Here is a preview of one page of our book... enjoy!

How to Show a Grandparent You Care

If they fall down, you can help them get back up.  If they’re bleeding, you can put some medicine on it and a band-aid on them.  When they leave, you can walk them out and sometimes they take you out for dinner or lunch.  You could say thank you for lunch or dinner.  You can ask to hold things for them.  On holidays, you can give them presents.  Some good presents for grandparents are fragile angels, roses, Star Wars characters, and bobbly heads of their favorite sports players.  XOXOXO means love, so give your grandparents hugs and kisses!

51 and half feet of three digit numbers!!!

Check out our teamwork!!

Important June Dates

*JUNE DATES*

Below is a list of upcoming events.  The next four weeks will be very busy!

June 3rd:  Luncheon for our Grandparents.  We are inviting them to come to our classroom at 10:30 that morning for a small performance and book share then join us for lunch.

June 6th:  Field Day:  Pack extra clothes for your child.  Please apply sunscreen at home and have your child wear socks and sneakers.

June 11th:  First Grade Mall:  A flyer will go home soon explaining this activity and needed items.  We will need you to help donate items to help ensure success for this activity.  Your child is sure to have a blast!

June 18th: (raindate: June 19) Newcastle Field Trip:  A permission slip will go home soon.  All families are welcome to attend.  You can spend some or all of the time with us or just join us afterwards for an ice cream at Lagos.  We plan to be at Newcastle for 9:15 and leave by 1:00.  We hope to arrive to Lagos by 1:30 and head back to school by 2:00.  All students will need to ride on the bus to the activities and back to school again.

June 20th:  Last Day of School!

Learning about the suffix -Ed

We are learning about the suffix -ed The starfish learned when they read a word with -Ed at the end it means the word has already happened in the past. Our class also learned that the suffix -Ed can make three sounds /t/, /d/, and /ud/.

We played wordo today (similar to bingo) with -Ed words.

While you are reading with your child, point out words with suffixes!

 

Science is awesome!

We had a great Monday! We are doing a science experiment using white carnations and food colored water to learn about the role of plant's stems! The kids brainstormed great questions and came up with a hypothesis. We are documenting our growth of our 12 foot sunflower seeds that we planted on Friday afternoon, and even tried blogging on the IPADs. These starfish are tech savvy! I was impressed with how well they used the IPAD to type their blog posts. They had to work together in partnerships and they collaborated so well! Go starfish!

Thank you Sophie for sharing your violin today! You did a wonderful job sharing your string instrument. Ask you change what's the difference between a fiddle and a violin. See what your expert 1st graders have to say about this!

Starfish learning about Science through Art

The kids have learned that plants need soil, rain, sun, and space in order to grow and survive. We started our project with watercolor painting. We used this medium to illustrate our sky, grass, and soil. We used our textured painted paper to create rain and clouds, sunshine, and plant parts. This type of artwork is similar to the famous children's book author Eric Carle. The kids enjoyed this and made the connection to the author study they did with his books in Kindergarten. Here are the stages of our learning and artwork. We completed the project on Friday by adding labels. These came out awesome and the kids really enjoyed the project!

Starfish Gazette- May 13, 2013

Hi Starfish Families,

I hope all the Starfish Moms had a wonderful Mother's Day!  The kids really enjoyed making their Maps of Their Moms last week.  I could really tell how much they love spending time with each of you!

A special thank you to all for making Teacher Appreciation day so special last week. The lunch was amazing and I appreciate all the wonderful cards and kind thoughts!



Here are some of the things we will learn about this week

• Plants and how they grow
• Homophones- words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings
• How to become the characters in the books that we read. We have been learning how to become actors and actresses within our books.  We have been talking about how to change our voices, shoulders, facial expressions, and hands to act out how the character is feeling

**FYI- Your child might be bringing home a book this week that they have already read at home.  We are looking at books this week for a different purpose to become the characters through our voices and movements. 

• Learning how scientists write down their experiments so they can grow their thinking
• We are using the number graph to help us with addition and subtraction
• Learn how to paint using a variety of mediums to add texture:  Examples: painting with pine needles, tooth brushes, forks, salt, etc to add dimension to our painting
• Learning about plant parts and their purpose
• Learning how to edit "clean up" a piece of writing.  We are working to publish one informational book.

If you are interested in helping to publish (typing) the starfish informational books, please let me know. I would send home a few books to type with an easy format. Thank you!


Some activities we will do this week:

• We will predict what will happen if we put white carnations food coloring 
• write about our science experiments
• Create plant diagrams using the textured colored paper and labeling the plant parts
• Play I have Who Has Place Value
• We will watch Magic School Bus: Gets Planted.  This movie will teach the child how plants eat and make their own food!
• Learn about plants using the smart board
• Play baseball during P.E.
• Revise and edit informational books to prepare for sharing at Grandparents Lunch.
• Work in partnerships to learn from each other about becoming actors while we read
• Continue practicing our math facts

Homework Update:

This is the last official week of homework! Woo-hoo! We will continue to pack a R.A.H each night until middle of June.  We are working to Master a collection of 35 words to prepare the starfish for 2nd Grade.  If your child has not mastered these words, I will be sending these words home  next week to practice for the remaining weeks of school!

Upcoming Events:

 

May 15 Early Release

June 3 Grandparents Lunch

June 11 First Grade Mall

June 18 New Castle Commons Field trip

 

Field Trip on Tuesday, June 18^th (Rain Date June 19^th) to GreatIsland Common in Newcastle. This is the ultimate field trip to share with your child, and I encourage at least one parent for each childto come along for a fun-filled day at the shore. I would greatly appreciate having the extra hands and eyes to ensure our safety at the water’s edge!

 

 

Starfish Wish List:

 

We seem to be running out of a few items that we use everyday. We would greatly appreciate your donation.

 

-Clorox Wipes

 

-Plastic Spoons

 

-Yogurt Containers: If your family eats yogurt at home, we are looking for empty yogurt containers for our classroom.  We use the yogurt cups for art projects.

 

 

Have a wonderful week!

 

Megan Rochford

 

 

 

A great day for a Wellness Walk

Fraction People

While we are learning about Fractions, we brought together some creativity and art to create FRACTION PEOPLE! These came out awesome! They are hanging up outside the library! Please come and check them out if you are in the building soon! Great job Starfish!

KIDBLOGS- The kids will soon be professional bloggers

Blogging

Tomorrow the Starfish will officially turn into bloggers! This Tuesday, with the help from Ms. O'Connor, they will get their introduction to blogging. The site we will be using is called called Kidblogs. Blogging allows students to publish their work for an authentic audience.

Furthermore, students can explore other Kidblogs and respond with comments or questions. You should know that our Kidblog site is completely moderated by me. No post or comment will show up on the site unless I have personally previewed and approved it. An equally important thing for parents to know is that because of the moderation set up, our Kidblog site is visible to everyone. Our students will have a real worldwide audience, and I am sure that comments will be coming in from everywhere. 

Lastly, the students are well aware of their responsibility and safety on the Internet. Tomorrow we will have a discussion about internet safety and the importance of using only their first name and to not give out any personal information in their blog posts.  Again, I will approve all posts and comments for appropriateness and user safety.

If you would like to view the site now, click here

Students can login here (passwords will be coming home tomorrow in your child's blue folder!!)

The students are so excited to have their very own place to write and have it be read. Please spread the word about our blogs to friends and relatives from across the country. This is an opportunity to connect people from all over the world!

The kids have been really excited about the opportunity to Blog. While looking at some of the other classroom kidblogs, we noticed that the kids wrote about things that happen outside of school (ex: soccer games, dance recitals, favorite new toys, April vacation, etc.) I'm hoping that we can carry over the blog posts to the summer so it will be a fun way for the kids to stay connected and a place where we can share exciting parts of our summer vacation!