Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!

Last week we began a 5-week unit on insects. Students have learned that ALL insects have 3 main body parts: head, thorax and abdomen. They also have 6 legs, antennae and some have wings. We looked at how Eric Carle creates illustrations. He cuts apart pieces of painted-on tissue paper to make each pages illustration. We cut out different shapes to make our insects. Then we wrote a poem about bugs using adjectives and nouns. Take a look at their art below!:

aARgh! It's what a pirate says!

An important sound we teach in 1st grade is the sound 'ar' makes. To help kids remember this sound we refer to it as the "pirate sound." This year we decided to dedicate a week to a pirate theme to help our students learn and remember this important sound!

We read pirate books at read aloud time, read pirate themed books during reading groups, made pirate hats, made a list of 'ar' words, had a pirate themed PE game, wrote about what we would say, wear and do if we were pirates, went on a treasure hunt for 'ar' words, made a pirate to look like ourselves, illustrated a picture to go with a pirate poem and wrote a pirate story together.

Here are pictures from some of our pirate adventures this past week.

We created a list of many words with the 'ar' sound!

 We made our own lists of our favorite 'ar' words. We also created pirate hats we wore all week!

Then we used our list and our creative minds to create ourselves as pirates. I was impressed with their creativity. One student purposely left an arm off, claiming he was a one-armed pirate!

On Wednesday we answered clues from our treasure map and went out into our school to find our treasure. Below is an example of how the treasure looked throughout the school. Each 1st grade class had a different color of clues/treasure.

Here students are searching for their treasure!

Students returned to show off their clue and treasure!

We added our treasure to our treasure map!

To end our week we wrote a story together using what we had learned about pirates and our 'ar' words we found in our treasure hunt!

Hope you had fun enjoying our pirate adventure! Sorry for not posting in awhile, upon returning from spring break we were so busy with a unit on force and motion that I forgot to take pictures and blog! Hoping to get back to our weekly posts! :)

Elements of Art Part 2

Well... it's the first official day off for spring break and I just realized I forgot to post last week! We had a busy week right before break. Since we last posted the students have worked hard on two other art projects to end our art unit.

First students thought about their favorite outdoor place to create a landscape of. We had learned about background, middle ground and foreground. The students learned about perspective and took everything else they had learned about color, texture and shape to create these beautiful landscapes:

Our final project was crayon art. Students chose crayons in one of the following categories that we had learned about: Primary colors, Secondary colors, Monochromatic colors, Rainbow colors, Warm colors or Cool colors. Look at how amazing these turned out:

Elements Of Art

2 weeks ago I attended a tech conference in Portland. I told the students I would be learning new ways to use my iPad in the classroom. One app I learned about is called 30 Hands. It's a great, easy to use app that allows you to make video presentations with photos, drawings and your voice. I created a tutorial for how to use the 30 Hands app, with the 30 Hands app. Here is that tutorial:

It's a free app and you may want to download it for your child to use at home! 

They created a video presentation using 30 Hands to share about the first part of our unit on the Elements of Art. Here is their video: 

Didn't they do a wonderful job?!

Part 2 of our art unit coming next week!

Valentine's Day!

Last week we celebrated Valentine's Day. Here is what we did to celebrate this holiday!

We made checkerboard hearts. We chose 2 colors and colored every other square, row by row to make it look like a checkerboard.

We also made marble painted hearts. They are hanging on our windows.

We followed step-by-step directions to create a "Love Bug" Cookie.

 We opened our Valentines!

Thanks to all the families who helped by bringing stuff in for our party! It was a lot of fun!