Field Trip

 On Monday, March 31, we were lucky enough to be invited to not just one great local place, but TWO! Dave's Pizza and Animal Tracks Veterinary Clinic are locally owned businesses and employers of Promise Center students, so we made the trip to Viroqua with some high school friends in tow.

At Dave's Pizza, we learned about some of the special equipment Dave uses to roll the dough and cook bread sticks and pizzas.

Then, the kids each got to help make their own mini-pizza! Here's Carrie helping a kindergartener pick out toppings.

Then, they got to eat the pizza that they made in Dave's dining room! It was awesome. 

We also got to visit Animal Tracks, where I wasn't able to catch as many photos. Dr. Kumlin taught us all about the important work they do to keep animals healthy. The kids got to examine X-rays, look into a microscope, visit the operating room, and learn about the kinds of things Dr. Kumlin and her co-workers do every day when they have animal check ups and surgeries. Animal Tracks gave each visitor a goodie-bag with a surgical mask and cap, fruit snacks, and other treats. 

Thank you, Animal Tracks and Dave's Pizza! We had a great time!

What We've Been Up To...

We've been busy so far this early spring!

Here are some pictures to show what we've been doing:

Learning about the commutative property of addition using paint and color-mixing! Just as yellow + red = orange and red + yellow = orange, we can know that 3+2 = 5 and 2+3 = 5!

We sadly said goodbye to our student teacher, Ms. Timmerman! We wish her luck in her next student teaching placement and beyond!

Before she left, she taught us a lot about maps. 

On St. Patrick's Day, we celebrated with a visit to our classroom by a leprechaun, and making rainbow fruit kebabs.

These first graders are reading up a storm!

The last of the snow finally melted...

... and so our Wildcat finally came home! Here are the kids talking to Ms. Gustafson's parents about their adventures with Wildcat over the winter. 

I'll try to be better about posting our adventures as they happen from now on!

PebbleGo

PebbleGo is an online research tool designed for young readers! There are four databases, one for animals, one for earth and space, one for social studies, and one for biographies. The first graders use this tool all the time when they're curious about something or someone, or when researching something specific as in their oviparous animal reports from last week. Each data base features expertly-leveled text and navigation specifically designed for beginning researchers. Enriched with spoken-word audio, text highlighting, and audio and video clips, PebbleGo builds a foundation of research skills for every learner! PebbleGo is available for you to use at home!
The username is wildcats2 and the password is learn. Enjoy!

Oviparous Animal Unit

 To kick off our unit on oviparous (egg-laying) animals, we had chicks in our classroom for about 7 days. They got big, too big, very quickly and were hopping out of their classroom "coop," so they retired to Ms. G.'s house. The kids sure had fun with them while they were here!

Measuring their height

Drawing and labeling their body parts

Teams of two took special care of a chick. They named them so creatively!

Weighing them with cubes

We'll continue our oviparous animal unit with a study of ladybugs and ants. 

While we're waiting for them to arrive (in the mail!), we researched oviparous animals. 

The kids each chose an oviparous animal they were interested in, and looked through resources taking notes on their animal's egg-laying habits, diet, physical adaptations, and other interesting facts.

Then they planned their writing project using a graphic organizer.

Next they typed their reports on the classroom computers. 

Last, they used Google Images to search for photograph of their animal to use as an illustration for their report. 

The first graders really knocked my socks off with this project! 

Stop by our classroom to check out our research!