Watercolor flowers

With spring coming, I wanted to get some more colorful artwork on our walls, and I couldn't let my colleagues in the Arts Academy have all the fun with art projects!

We did a short lesson on water colors, drawing flowers, and distinguishing warm and cool colors. The students were then free to design and draw their own flower (after a little practice/doodle time) and then paint their flower using warm colors, and adding a background with cool colors.

I am so pleased with their artwork! I am also positive that I have now have the most beautiful cabinet in all the land.

Speech Meet

Speech Meet was so fun! It was great seeing the kids stand up in front of the class and the judges and recite their memorized piece. Here are a few pictures from that day!

Valentines for Police Officers

For Valentine's Day, we made special Valentine cards for the police officers at the station down the street. I love how much work the kids out into making these cards extra special! We make sure to pray for their safety every day.

GRAVITY

In science, we studied force and gravity. We learned that gravity is a pulling force that is actively pulling everything down to the earth. Our first graders had fun imagining what would happen if there was suddenly no gravity! I asked students to picture what would happen in our classroom, in their house, or outside if the force of gravity were to suddenly cease. Then I gave them the assignment of drawing a picture to show what they had pictured. 

To really drive home how strong the force of gravity was, we put a twist on this drawing assignment. We had to work against the force of gravity! I had the students lay down and hold their clipboard up above them while they were drawing. We decided at the end of the activity (with tired arms) that gravity had a lot more force than we realized!

Heart Words

Around Valentine's Day, we read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.

While we read this story, we used a large paper heart to symbolize Chrysanthemum's "heart," or her feelings. Whenever a character did something that hurt Chrysanthemum's feelings, we crumpled the heart a little bit. Whenever someone did something nice for Chrysanthemum, we tried to smooth the heart out a little bit.

By the end of the story, although Chrysanthemum's problems had been resolved and the other characters were nice to her, Chrysanthemum's heart was still pretty wrinkly. We used this time as an opportunity to talk about how our words can really hurt someone's feelings in a way that can't totally be fixed. The students read the phrase, "Before you speak, think and be smart. It's hard to fix a wrinkled heart." We put our names on band-aids and affixed them to the heart as a symbolic promise that we would try to use our words to heal hearts.

Since mean words can make a heart "wrinkly" and hurt someone's feelings, we discussed the alternative - heart words! Heart words are words and phrases that can help heal broken hearts. They are words that can solve problems and help someone feel loved.

We brainstormed some "heart words" that students could use. Here is what we came up with!

Pair of Pears

Last week in first grade we learned about homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings. We used the examples "pear" and "pair" to understand this concept, and then engaged in some hands-on practice. Each student received a word on a card, and then they had to find another student that had the homophone for their word. After we were all paired up, we discussed the meaning of these words and then wote a sentence using our word. In the end, we put our sentence and illustration on a pear and paired it up with its homophone! Here are a few examples:

Happy New Year!

We got off to a great start this new year in first grade! We are all getting used to writing "2015" when we write the date. We did a couple of projects to remind us that we are starting a new year - the year when all my firsties will become second graders!

Here are our New Years' resolutions and a few of our party hat self portraits!