Hopes & Dreams

We started talking about our Hopes & Dreams for first grade by reading a book about Philipe Petit called The Man Who Walked Between The Towers.    

You can reread the book here:

Room 612 was surprised to find out that this was a true story!

Here is the newscast from that morning back in 1974.

Here is a more recent video in which we hear more of the story behind Philippe Petit.

Philipe had a dream to walk on a high wire between the Twin Tower buildings, and he didn't stop until he had accomplished his dream.  

We will have our Hopes & Dreams conferences this fall.  Parents, teachers, and students will be sharing our Hopes & Dreams with each other.

What are your Hopes & Dreams?

Astronaut Food Taste-Testing

We were planning to try astronaut food during our space party, but we had so many goodies that day so we decided to wait until after break.
We tried applesauce in pouches, freeze-dried fruit...

...and ice cream sandwiches!

We were so excited to finally try the food!

The verdict was pretty positive.  We needed to drink lots of water, though!

Thank you to Emari's, Grace's, and Max's parents for donating the food!

Space Party!

On the last day together before our Winter Break, we had our space party!
The morning started out by getting sucked into the black hole of our classroom.

We celebrated surviving the black hole and earned NASA stickers!

The room was decorated with constellations, planets hanging from the ceiling, and starry lights.

We went to fun space stations!

We played with space slime...

...made straw rockets...

...made a nebula in a jar...

...played Space Bingo...

...and dressed up our stuffed animals as astronauts!

Here is a video of our space party fun!

Happy Holidays!

Our Personal Space Expert

At the end of our immersion stage, we still had lots of lingering questions. Fortunately, Max's dad is our resident space expert.  We emailed him our questions:

Max's dad came in right before break to help answer these questions. He even brought things lioke shuttle models, real meteors, and replicated Mars dust for us to explore!

He prepared a PowerPoint to share pictures and explain answers to our questions.

He even gave us each a dime and had us focus on the eye of Roosevelt.  He said that scientists took a picture in the sky that was only the size of Roosevelt's eye on the dime, and they were able to see lots of additional galaxies in just that tiny speck of a picture. Wow!

He shared different types of meteors with us...

 ...as well as replicated Mars dust.

 He even had an old piece of the exterior shuttle material that we could actually touch!

Thank you for your dad's expertise and time, Max! 

Owl Inquiry Day!

When Kaydence's family heard that we had lots of questions about owl pellets when we had finished the read aloud chapter book, Poppy (see linked blog post here), they offered to get some real owl pellets for us to investigate!

I decided to turn it into a big inquiry day on owls.  Room 408 loves Research Workshop! We started by brainstorming lingering questions we had about owls:

We reviewed all our sources and started our research by studying photos, reading books, or researching on our ipads on PebbleGo and Raz Kids Reading.

After lunch, we got to explore an owl skull in our Discovery area and weighed owl pellets on a balance.

Of course, we always recorded our new learning!

We reviewed all our facts quietly at our tables and gathered together to share some of our cool facts.

We recorded the learning during our sharing using a padlet (to see all facts you may have to scroll to the right).

Finally, the time came that we have all been waiting for:  dissecting owl pellets! We found it morbidly fascinating.

We found lots of cool bones inside, along with a *lot* of fur.

When we found a bone, we used a diagram to help us identify what kind of bone it was and what kind of animal it came from:

Eliza found a hip bone!

We found some pretty interesting stuff!

Kaydence found a caterpillar larva or cocoon.

Morgan found a jaw bone with teeth still in it.

Here is a video of our Owl Inquiry Day!


Thank you for encouraging inquiry, Kaydence & family!