First Grade News: LOVE is in the air!!

What an exciting week in 1st grade!! With our "Hooray for the USA" program and Valentine's Day, we couldn't help but have FUN!!

THANKS again to all the parents, grandparents and friends who helped these spectacular performers memorize their speeches and dressed them to look their best! We couldn't have done it without you!

Sacagawea, Elizabeth Blackwell, Amelia Earhart, Juliette Gordan Lowe

Buck O'Neil, Babe Ruth, Frank Lloyd Wright, Abe Lincoln, George Washington

Georgia O'Keefe, Neil Armstrong, Anne Sullivan

Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Jesse Owens

Wilma Rudolph, Louisa May Alcott, Molly Brown, Annie Oakley

Henry Ford

Amazing 1st grade American performers!!

USA celebration with cookies and juice! Thanks Kate's mom for the yummy cookies!

After the BIG performance, Mrs. Waller shared with the class a slide show from a trip she took to Washington D.C. So much history in our nation's capital.

Our President was home when she took this picture. We wondered what he was doing???

Kate's showing her special Valentine message in a bottle.

Beautiful Elizabeth!!

In language arts despite the extra practices we had for our performance, we had some great quality time to work on some important skills with a 9 square tic-tac-toe board.

Starfall.com is such a great site to explore when working on word patterns such as 2 vowel patterns like "ai".

Oscar and Lamar are putting all 50 states in ABC order. Way to go boys!!

Lily is practicing her letter writing skills by writing a Valentine letter to a friend. She learned that every letter must have an opening, a body, and a closing.

In guided reading Ms. Lorfing had a group read about the famous American Jane Goodall. We discussed her important contributions to the education of chimpanzees and the destruction of their habitat. We also talked about non-fiction book features that make reading this type of genre easier to read.

Emma listened to a story called, "The Night Before Valentine's Day". She compared this story with a text-to-text connection. Can you guess what book she compared it too?

In guided reading one group read about Ellis Island and the process immigrants took to become United States citizens. What an exciting time for so many people!

In social studies we studied an important famous American named Cesar Chavez. He carved the path for many other Hispanic Americans by standing up for equal rights and fair laws that helped protect workers. After studying this brave man, many in the class compared him to other famous Americans like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.

We made pictures to show all the ways Cesar fought for the rights of others.

In Math we've been working on telling time to the hour and minute. Please ask your child what time it is at home for some extra practice.

This fun video discusses minute and hour hands and how they move around the clock.

It's 6:00!

Sophia and Emma are showing off their hand-made clocks we used to practice telling time to the hour and half hour.

Mrs. Waller worked in small groups reviewing place value. Using the place value mats and manipulatives helps to understand how numbers are grouped.

Jackson is adding groups of tens in the tens place and ones in the ones place. He's making a BIG number!

Charlotte was in charge of number corner this week. Way to go Charlotte!!

In hands-on-science we did an experiment called Fireworks in February. It involved water, oil and food coloring. We discussed whether or not oil and water would mix and then watched a video about a real-world example, an oil spill of what happens when oil and water mix.