Exploring Poetry

Thank you for the flowers for Teacher Appreciation Week. I love you!!!

Our Mother's Day surprise gift was so much fun to make. We talked a lot about abstract paintings. We looked at many abstract paintings and they interpreted the paintings in many different ways. I told them I wanted my son to make one for me.

Our class is exploring poetry. We are learning techniques poets use to convey a lot of meaning. These are called poetic devices. They are terms like metaphor, rhyme, alliteration, and simile. They will see these terms more throughout their years of learning. This is just an introduction. They have done very well being able to tell the difference between simile and metaphor.

We did acrostic poems with our names. Cinquain poems were done beautifully using sea shells as the subject. You would not believe the describing words these first graders came up with.

On Wednesday and Thursday we paired up and interviewed our partner. After we had our answers about them we made silohuette poems. They are adorable. They will be coming home this week after we share them. I will send pictures in next week's blog.

We shared our cinquain and diamante poems with the second graders and they shared poetry with us.

Thank you to Iris's dad for orchestrating our butterfly garden. It will be a great adventure to look for caterpillars and then butterflies throughout the summer. You may have to make a trip or two up to school and look at them. They are on the Walnut side of the ECC building. The kids enjoyed their part in the planting.
Computer this week was review of many skills. The students loved this website and asked that I relay it on to their parents. It is http://www.funbrain.com/. We started by practicing plurals with a game called plural girls. They could go on to addition review, subtraction review or math baseball.
We used the computer several days in centers these past two weeks with shapes and money.

A new concept we taught this week in Math was 2 dimensional shapes like circles, squares, rectangles. We then introduced 3 D shapes like sphere, cube, rectangular prism . We taught that the shapes circle, square, rectangle are called PLANE shapes and the 3D shapes like sphere, cube, and pyramid are called SOLIDS.
We used descriptive words to describe 3D shapes and let them hold the shapes. We had an interactive computer game that also let the turn the shapes around and count the sides of the solid shape.

You might have heard your child talk about the fun we had with Geoboards this week. We began by having the students make a triangle with one rubber band and then we had them make a 5 sided shape from there. We then went on and on with shape discovery and geoboards.

Math review for 5 minutes a day with flash cards in highly encouraged...throughout the summer. It will be a huge help in second grade to know the facts.

During TNT we played a great game of charades with all the things we've learned in first grade going all the way back to community helpers. Wow! these kids were great.

Thank you to Dagny's mom who came and demonstrated a new ap on the IPAD with stuffed animal buddies. The AP is a story and the buddy interacts with the story as the child follows along. The kids loved it and Hallmark is releasing a new buddy in the Fall that the kids were very interested in.

Field Day information: Clothing/ Shoes: Please have your child wear appropriate clothing and shoes so they can fully participate in Field Day. They will be permitted to wear a hat or visor outside, and if the weather is warm, please have children were a loose clothing that allows them to stay cool and active. Shoes must be appropriate for field, playground, and gym floor surfaces. Examples of shoes that are not appropriate : Sandals, crocs, flip flips boots with heels, ballet or dress shoes.

Spelling Test is on Friday, May 20th

Retirement Party for Dr. Ann Kennedy and Georgianna Parkey on Friday, May 20th following chapel.

Field Day is Monday, May 23rd First grade go from 1-3:00. Parents are free to join. You play games with them if you are brave enough.

Sun Safety: Please help protect your child's skin by applying sunscreen before coming to school on Field Day. While part of Field Day is indoors, a significant time will be spent on the field. I am happy to reapply sunscreen to any child if you send a marked bottle. There is not much shade.