Grandparent's Day Cards

For Grandparent's Day, we made "Hugs to Go" to give our family so that they could have a hug from us whenever they needed it! In order to customize our "hugs," we needed to measure the distance from one hand to the other. We used measuring tape and teamwork to get our measurements, graphed our results, and then used the measurements to make accurately-sized hugs!

Police Station Field Trip

In October, we visited the Rancho Cucamonga Police Department. We have "adopted" the police department this year, which means that we have committed to praying for them daily and showing them our love and appreciation throughout the year. We were very blessed to have the opportunity to tour the police station, look at a real police car, watch real-time cameras posted throughout the city, talk to police officers, and even meet the police chief! We have a few photos from that day - we were not allowed to take photos inside the station because there is always a lot of important work going on! Here are some photos from that day to see more, check out photos that our wonderful parent chaperones have posted on our shutterfly site!

Thank you to our chaperones who kept us safe on our walk to the Police Station!

Dancing Raisins!

In science, we have been studying the three states of matter - solid, liquid, and gas. We did an experiment to see how all three of these states of matter can interact! The materials for our experiment were:

• cups (solid)
• raisins (solid)
• water (liquid)
• clear soda (liquid and gas)

First, our students predicted what would happen when we put raisins into two different cups - one filled with water, and the other filled with clear soda. 

Then, we performed the experiment! We poured water into one glass and clear soda into another. Then we put about a 1/3 cup of raisins into both glasses and observed what happened! In the glass with water, the raisins sank to the bottom of the glass. In the soda, however, after the raisins sank to the bottom of the glass, they began "dancing!" One by one, raisins came up to the surface of the soda and then sank. 

We then recorded our observations. 

After our observations were recorded, we gathered on the carpet to discuss what happened. We drew a detailed, labeled picture to help organize our thinking. Here is what happened with the dancing raisins: 

In the soda, there were bubbles of carbon dioxide, which is a gas. The raisins that were in the soda were lifted to the surface by these bubbles, and then dropped down to the bottom of the glass after the bubbles popped. 

We had a lot of fun practicing our science words - like "observe," liquid," and "solid." We can't wait to see what else we learn this year!

Box Tops!

Box Tops are a great resource to help supply our classroom with fun and useful supplies! Box Tops are due on Wednesday, October 21 for the Fall submission date. Remember that at Upland Christian, all Box Top funds are given directly to the classroom teacher for use in your child's classroom! Here are some of the items we were able to add to our classroom from our Box Top fund last year:

Welcome back!

Hello and happy school year to you all!
I am finally catching up after the whirlwind of back-to-school set up and activities, and I have some fun things to share. In the first few weeks of school, our focus is on learning procedures, procedures, procedures! It is very important that we know how to do everything that needs to be done in our classroom so that it will be "smooth sailing" for the rest of the year. Your first graders are now experts at packing and unpacking their backpacks, keeping their desk neat, walking in line, and how to proceed when there is an emergency.
Along with mastering the many procedures there are in day-to-day life, we have been learning some academic games and activities that will help us practice skills all year long!

Write the Room:

Greater Than/Less Than Math Game

Spelling BUMP!

Students get to practice being the teacher!

Guess My Number!

Open House

It was so wonderful to see our first graders and lots of other elementary students at Open House last night!
Here is the End-of -Year slideshow that was playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8mF8Zik5Cs

And in case you're like me and want to watch the Do Something video over and over, here is that link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD8O6fov5s8
(I know you all enjoyed this video, too, since it has over 300 views!!)

Standardized Testing

Have you ever been curious as to what standardized testing sounds like in a 1st grade classroom?
Something like this:

"Class, turn to page 45 in your test booklets."
"Turn to page 45.... Honey, it's page 45, not 35."
"You need to be on page 45."
"Ok, we're ready to sta-" "Yes, here's a pencil."
"Ok, let's start with Sample A."
"Sample A, not number 1."
"No, don't fill in a bubble yet! I haven't asked the question!"

We have to admit this is probably not the most entertaining monologue to listen to. And while standardized testing at UCA is kept to a minimum and is actually very helpful to administration and teachers when planning curriculum and instruction, it's kind of... boring sometimes!
Click on the video below to see what we did to get our bodies moving, keep blood flowing to our brains, and beat the testing blues!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_5KQbB4wcg
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*disclaimer - no footage of actual testing is included in this video. I was responsibly proctoring the test, not filming it ;)
**Someday I will figure out how to embed video into the blog! Someday!