Skeletons! by Dakota

 Skeletons scare people because they run around. He is running away from the skeleton.

Apple Tasting Party!

 

Our teacher brought in 8 different kinds of apples. We took pictures of the apples, then we observed them carefully and we talked about how each apple looked. We wrote its name on our Apple Expert paper. We predicted what color the apples would be on the inside. Some were white and some were yellow. We cut them up and put them on a plate. We passed them around and we each took a piece. We smelled them and predicted if they would taste juicy, tart, sweet or sour. Then we ate them and circled what we liked on our Apple Expert paper. We voted the Winter Banana our class' favorite apple. Then we ate the extra pieces. Yummy!

OUR PUMPKINLAND TRIP

 

An anonymous donor gave our school money for a field trip. We decided to go to Pumpkinland. We all had a snack in the big white tent, then we went on a hayride. We sat on hay and the tractor pulled the wagon. Next we picked pumpkins. We each got our own. We got back on the hayride and went back to the white tent for lunch. Then we went on the Frankenslide lots of times! We sat on carpets and they made you go really, smokin' fast! The slide was very, very big and very high. It was FUN! We went in the short corn maze too. It was a little bit tricky to find your way out. We liked it. We saw bunnies, goats, donkeys and horses to pet. Then we got back on the bus and came back to school. 

THANK YOU to the person who gave us this trip. It was wonderful! 

by Brooke, Dakota & Jase

"Think Different"

Steve Jobs was the CEO (person in charge of everyone) at Apple computers. He was one of the most creative and innovative minds of our time. He helped to invent Apple computers, the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Our school district is full of Apple computers. He always said, "Think different". What does "Think different" mean to you?

PURPLE DAY!

Today was Purple Day! We wore all the purple we had. We brought purple surprises. One was a lizard. Our teacher brought a purple stretchie. We counted our purple clothes and tallied them. We read purple stories. We wrote our own purple story. We took pictures. We learned to spell purple. We laughed a lot. We love purple!

We have read lots of Worm stories by Kathy Caple. We LOVE Worm stories! We wrote our own Worm story:

Worm at School

by The Starfish

 Worm walks to school. Worm met his teacher when he got to school. Worm started to play with blocks. The teacher said, "You aren't supposed to play yet." Worm went outside. The teacher said, "It's not recess time." Worm took all the books from the bookshelf. The teacher said, "No, Worm, it's not story time. Don't take out all of our books." Worm drew on the board. The teacher said, "It's not Choice Time yet." Worm played with his food at snack time. The teacher said, "Don't play with your food. You are supposed to eat it." Worm drew on the walls at Choice Time. The teacher said, "Don't draw on the walls. Here is some paper." Worm drew on the paper. He drew a picture of everybody hugging. The teacher said, "Nice job, Worm." She put Worm's picture on the wall. Worm likes school.

Crickets in our Classroom

We have crickets in a tank in our classroom. Our tank is filled with soil and grass. The crickets like to eat plums, grapes, oranges, and tomatoes. They don't like apples. We put in a wet paper towel so they have water. 
There are boy crickets and girl crickets. The girls have a long ovipositor to lay their eggs.  They lay their eggs in the ground.The eggs are too small to see. They will hatch around January. Baby crickets are smaller than ants. They are the size of a pinhead. 
 We have some big crickets and little crickets. The small ones are black and brown. The big ones are black. The little ones jump around a lot. It's fun to watch them eat. We like listening to them chirp. Do you know how crickets chirp?

TEN DAYS IN FIRST GRADE!

Lillian - I like it when we do math and Choice Time, and reading books and when we sing.
Daniel - I like being Head Starfish, and working on the COWS.
Jaidyn - I like Choice Time.
Dana - I like spending time with my teachers.
Hunter - I like doing Challenges and math.
Tasha - I like everything!
Aurora - I like singing songs together.
Dakota -  I like working on our interactive whiteboard.
Jase - I like Choice Time and math and being Head Starfish.
Coty - I like learning French.
Brooke - I like learning French too, and doing math.
Emma - I like speaking French, and working on our interactive whiteboard and being Name Star.
Nathan - I like doing our interactive whiteboard.
Alanna - I like being Word Wizards.
Laney - I like Choice Time and story time, and making books.


We all love working on our Polyvision interactive whiteboard! Thank you Polyvision!

Tomato Horn Worms

These are Tomato Horn Worms. They are mostly green with a white stripe and they have a spike. You shouldn't touch the spike. On the side of them it looks like eyes. They feel comfortable and soft when you hold them. They eat tomato plants. I went to my friend's garden to catch them. One was making a cocoon. It will hatch into a hummingbird moth.  I just found a baby one too. My baby one doesn't have a spike yet.

A NEW SCHOOL YEAR!

Our class name is The Starfish. Here we are on the first day of school!

HAPPY SUMMER!

The Stars took these pictures themselves, and wrote the captions too!

Games & Friends

We had a wonderful afternoon teaching our friends how to play games. What a great way to end the school year!

HAPPY SUMMER TO EVERYONE!

Peanut Butter Day

We had a sticky-great time! We had peanut butter snacks in the morning and voted for our favorite on our IWB. Most of us liked peanut butter on bananas best, but we all tried peanut butter on apples, on celery (no one liked that!) and on crackers. In the afternoon we made our own peanut butter pizzas with sandwich rounds, strawberries, blueberries and raisins. It was yummy!

DOGS

We read a poem about birds and a poem about bugs. We wrote a poem just like those, but we wrote about dogs.

DOGS

by The Stars

Tan dogs, black dogs,

Napping on their back dogs.

Warm dogs, chilly dogs,

Running, chasing, silly dogs.

Small dogs, big dogs,

Playing with the pig dogs,

We like dogs!

Our Reflections Winners

 Our PTA and Ms. Gronlie do a Reflections Project. This year was "Together We Can..."

This year, together we won!

Baby Turtle!

 Mrs. Pullen found this turtle on the street near our school. We think it's a baby snapping turtle. Mrs. Pullen's class is going to find out what it is. We think it's really, really cute!

SEAHORSES

Dylan - Seahorses are fish.

Their tails are curly. The babies are very tiny. They don't have teeth. Seadragons look like seaweed.

Chantelle - Seahorses hold on to seaweed with their tails so they don't float away.

Leah - The mom gives the eggs to the father. They do a mating dance.

Sierra - Seahorses come in all different colors. Their enemies are bigger fish and people.

Corbin - They eat little shrimp. Their skeleton is outside of their body. It's an exoskeleton.


Crysta  - Seahorses swallow their food whole.

Zoe - They eat by sucking food into their mouth like a vacuum. People are harvesting them and that's not good.


Taylor - Seahorses look like horses because their
noses are the same. People harvest them to eat them. They have fins behind their ears.

Jaz - They are the only animal where dad's have the babies. There are lots of kinds of seahorses, including seadragons.

Karsyn - They push their babies out from their stomach pouch.

Faith - They use their back fin to swim.

Tragan - They also use their tail to swim.

Catie - They have hundreds of babies at a time.

Cam - They can change colors a little.

Signs of Spring

We went outside to look for signs of spring. It was beautiful out! We are learning to take close-up pictures too.

ENOUGH SNOW!

It snowed on April Fool's Day, and we have had enough snow. We found a poem about SUNflakes by Frank Asch and made some sunflakes. We wrote a poem about snow too. We are tired of snow pants and boots. We are ready for SPRING!

The Tale of Custard The Dragon

Temperatures

Today we compared the temperature here with the temperature in Slovenia. It was 34 degrees Fahrenheit here, and 64 degrees Fahrenheit in Slovenia. We found out it was 30 degrees warmer in Slovenia. Some of us counted by 10's to find out. We decided we'd all like to go to Slovenia and visit our friends there.

Do you know that in Slovenia they measure their temperature in Celsius? It was 15 Celsius in Slovenia and 1 Celsius here. Pretty cool.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We all wore all the green we could find. We counted and found out we wore 94 pieces of green! We like the green, curly wig and thought it was cool. We had our own personal leprechaun too! Too bad our leprechaun didn't have any gold.  Cam brought in sparkling shamrocks and we each got one. 
We practiced our Star Words on the IWB,  and shamrocks were covering the words. We pulled Star Words out of a leprechaun's hat too. We had green apples and green grapes for snack. Some of us brought a green jello snack and a green shamrock cookie snack.  We heard a story about leprechauns and we wrote about leprechauns. We persuaded the leprechauns to give us their gold. We went up to visit our principal to wish her a Happy St. Patrick's Day, and we took a picture with her. We gave her a sparkling shamrock too. We made hats that said, "Happy St. Patrick's Day" and we got green glow-in-the-dark bracelets. We had an amazing St. Patrick's Day!

Whales

We built a pilot whale skeleton. We looked at pictures and diagrams to know how to do it. We used all the bones in the spine. The bones in the spine are called vertebrae. The whale has 7 vertebrae in its neck, just like us. All mammals have 7 neck vertebrae; even a giraffe! The vertebrae in the whale's tail have extra bones, called chevrons. The chevrons help the whales muscles to work better.

The whale's skull was huge! The holes on top of the whale's skull are its blowholes so it can breathe.

We were surprised to find out that whales have 5 phalanges, just like us! Whales have a scapula, just like us. Whales have ribs, just like us, but their ribs are much bigger.

We saw baleen. Baleen is what is in the mouth of whales that don't have teeth. The orca tooth was really big! 

Thank you to our PTA for getting us this wonderful program!

Doubles Facts

This is our first photography book. We chose the things to use to show the doubles facts, and we arranged them on a piece of colored paper. We got to pick the color. Then we took all of the photographs ourselves. Some of us had used a digital camera before, but for some of us it was the first time. It was FUN! We hope to make more books like this one.

We each got our own copy of the book to take home too.

Animals in the Arctic

We watched Arctic Tale. It was an awesome movie. We found out that the ice in the Arctic is melting too quickly. That means the polar bears don't have enough food. It also means they may not have a place to live. Some of the polar bears are dying. We want to have polar bears around when we grow up.

We hope people will recycle, save energy, save electricity, and bring their own bags to go shopping. We can help save the polar bears!