Wow! What a treat to have 'Jumping with Jill' come teach us all about healthy food and exercising! We had a full hour of singing and dancing with everyone in the school. Thanks to our awesome chef Jonathan and PE teacher Erika for a great time!
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We learned all about several different organs in our body from the outside in. To start we needed to have some models. We broke up into seven groups and added different organs as we learned about each one.
We learned: The skeleton is made up by our bones. Our bones gives us shape and protects our organs. Did you know we are born with 300 bones but as adults we only have 206 bones? They fuse together and get hard. Muscles allow us to move. There are more than 600 muscles in our bodies, some are muscles we can control where other are involuntary. Brain is made up of three parts, the cerebrum, cerebellum and the brain stem. The brain controls our thoughts, movement, our breathing and our emotions. Lungs help us breathe air. They expand when we inhale and return to their normal size when we exhale. They are protected by our rib cage. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood through our bodies. The more we exercise the faster our hearts will beat. The stomach breaks down our food into a liquid so our body can give us the nutrients it needs. Intestines are very long. They get the nutrients from the stomach then stores it to help your body absorb it. Kidneys are in the shape of a kidney bean. They clean the waste out of our blood. We got right into learning from the first week of school. Each week we took on a new animal group; amphibians, fish, birds, reptiles, mammals and insects. It was awesome to see what we already knew about them and learn more interesting facts. We even got to see some of these animals up close and personal on the playground... yuck :) When it came time to learn about mammals, we decided to conduct our own research projects. After choosing which mammal we wanted to learn more about, we looked through books, pictures and even got a day to research on our Chrome books! All week long we have been dressing up and having fun with our spirit days to celebrate Homecoming. To end the week, we walked down to watch the high school parade. Not only did we get to collect so much candy, but we also got to cheer on the high school sport teams and classes as they passed. :) We have been hard at work getting our Literacy Workshops in place. During this time of our day, we are working on a variety of things at our own pace and independently. I am so proud of how hard we have been working to make sure each workshop is set up and practiced correctly. The first workshop we focused on is Read to Self. We are continuing to build our stamina each and every day. It is so exciting to make new discoveries and interesting in books we are reading! We have learned the process it takes to pick a "good fit" book. Every day we have to make decisions that serves us unique purposes. Just like picking out our shoes for each day, we need to make sure the books we pick serves a purpose, match our interests and meet our levels of understanding and comprehension. Each pair of shoe serves a unique purpose. The boot is a working shoe, we can learn a lot of nonfiction books however if the shoe is too big and the information is too hard to understand, we won't get much done. However if my books are too easy and don't fit like my favorite old flip flop, I won't learn as much as I could. When I want to dress up and have a fun time, I want to wear my high heels. I want to make sure that some of the books I have are fun and have pretty pictures to follow along with. I have my running shoes for those books that are at my level and I can continue reading without help. When picking a book, we need to make sure we are fulfilling the purpose we have set. When we have selected the right book, we can read and discover a world of endless learning! Another workshop we have been working on is Work on Writing. We can express ourselves in many ways. One of them is through writing. We have practiced creating our ideas in pictures and explaining them using our words. When we are writing, we are making sure we are working independently and not interrupting other's focus, however we make sure there is time to share our pieces with our friends. Each day we are working on different pieces that make each workshop successful. We still have yet to uncover three other workshops, but they are coming in our near future, more is yet to come! :)
We have a class that is full of creative and positive learners. I am so excited to see these young minds grow and grow as we begin this adventure in first grade. :) The excitement entering my classroom that morning was in full swing, I think my excitement to finally start and meet my kiddos matched their excitement to come back to school.
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February 2016
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