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! 

Planet Ornaments

For a little celebration of our immersion stage before our winter break, we created glass planet ornaments to share with our families.

I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but they turned out similar to this:

They were beautiful!

Amaryllis Math

After Thanksgiving, I bought an amaryllis for us to measure and observe in the classroom.

We loved watching it grow, measuring it every few days, predicting when it would bloom, and what color it would be.
We were so excited when the bud started blooming!

Later, we noticed that a second bud was growing...

We started to track the second bud, as well as the first.

It bloomed on Dec. 13th, and it was red!

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the second bud bloom.  Forrest won the drawing to take it home with him over break.  Here is our final data:

Pet Sharing!

We got to meet some special family members this week.
Grace brought in her dog to share...

...and Eliza brought in her cat to share!

Humane Society Donations

Instead of exchanging gifts during the holidays, Hillcrest & LEADS 1st graders have chosen to make donations to our local humane society. 

We were able to get a visit from some thankful pets and members of the Humane Society.

We learned about ways to be safe around pets and read dogs' body language.

We even got to see a special dog and cat!

At the end, we each got a chance to pet the animals.

Thank you to all of our Hillcrest & LEADS families who donated items!

Personal Word Walls

Each child in Room 408 has a Personal Word Wall filled with words we need to know in a "snap."

Words that each child can spell in a "snap" are highlighted on their Personal Word Wall.

Each week the student chooses a word to work on that is not highlighted.  S/he makes the word in a variety of ways in hopes of learning the word so s/he can access it in a "snap" when s/he is reading or writing.

Then we take pictures of our hard work to document our work.

We are even learning to post our learning on Kidblog.  Stay tuned to see our Kidblogs!