We did it again!!!!

First and second grade love S.T.E.M! 

Today first and second grade competed in a marshmallow challenge again. This time we worked hard on improving our plans and discussed how to make our structures stronger and better ways to work together. In the engineering design process it is important that students reflect on what didn't work before and make a new (improved) plan. We started off with new teams and each student assigned each other a job. Students used many of the strategies we discussed on building stronger towers and almost all the teams started with their marshmallow on the top piece of the structure first. I am proud to say that each team was successful and had a standing tower. The towers ranged from 10 inches to 27 inches. Way to go, students!!!! Check out our awesome marshmallow towers.

 

"Yes, my dream is coming true. I am going to be an engineer." ~Winston

Visitation Magic

Today Visitation had the pleasure of having a real magician come to our school for an assembly. He had a bag of tricks that made all of us giggle and wiggle! Many of our students got to go on stage with the magician to assist him in creating his magical tricks.






Click on the video below to see kindergarten student Alyssa as she tries to help the magician :)

 

Alyssa from kindergarten

Ryann's visit with her old class and friends :)

We also had a special visitor in our WILD classroom. Ryann came back to visit us for the day. She joined her friends all day and participated in all our activities. Ryann came to Visitation for kindergarten and first grade. We loved seeing her back in our classroom and enjoyed spending the day with her. She got to be our special "Paw" student, line leader, bench warmer, and pass out morning stickers on folders.

Assembly time (Mackenzie, Winston, and Ryann

The third and forth grade classes studied Native American Tribes and Washington state history and created wonderful reports to share with everyone. Our class got to visit after lunch and learn about what each student studied. The kids loved walking around and seeing what the older children are working on. The third and forth grade students were all very prepared on their topic and did a fantastic job presenting the information. They truly were experts on their topics. Thank you for sharing!

Check out all our fun photos from today!

We are like flowers that bloom in spring!

In the WILD first grade this week we read the story, "The Tiny Seed," by Eric Carle. The kids studied the artwork in the story. They pointed out that Eric Carle layers colors on each page of the story. The students especially loved all the bright colors in this story. When we finished reading the story and analyzing the illustrations, we were inspired to make beautiful flowers full of color. Each student made a flower by layering colors of tissue paper on construction paper. Once they were glued to the paper, we sealed them with a special glue to make the paper blend together.

In addition to studying Eric Carle's artwork, we also discussed poetry. First and second grade wrote a poem about spring using an aabb pattern. We had so much fun with this! We wrote about what we like to do in spring, what spring looks like, what it sounds like, and what happens during the season of spring. Please come to our hall and check out our work. It is AWESOME and the kids did such a great job!

Learning in the park!

Today was such a beautiful day! At the end of the day, first and second grade could no longer stay in our classroom. It was just too nice outside. We packed all our things up and took our religion work with us to the church park. Mrs. Price and I separated the grades into two circles and learned about our catholic faith right outside the church. We had such a great time soaking in the sun! Below are a few pictures of the kids during religion class.

Second grade religion with Mrs. Price

First grade religion with Miss Pedrini

Writing a sentence about a person who helps and guides us.

Listening to Miss Pedrini

Writing a sentence about someone who helps and guides us.

Second grade studying

I thought this was a fun picture. We are on our way back to the school to head home. What a fun day in the park learning. We will be doing this again!

Fun and silly pictures!

Second grade is cooking up something good!

Second grade made hamburger book reports to share the stories they read in their literacy groups. We discussed how books are much like hamburgers. A hamburger has many important parts to make it taste yummy. The students discussed what they liked on a hamburger and were really excited to share. I explained that just like a hamburger, a book has to have all the important parts to make it good. We shared each story element on an ingredient of a hamburger and even shared our favorite part. The book reports turned out great and went home before Easter break! Great job, second grade!

Updates of what we did before spring break :)

The month of march brought a lot of green into our room. We did some fun activities to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We talked about St. Patrick and read a story to honor him. Ava's family sent in yummy cupcakes which turned the kids mouths green. They especially loved that!!! We made our beautiful shamrocks and wrote acrostic poems. For math, each student received a pocket of change to count. Once they counted their change, they illustrated the coins and created a cute pot of gold where their money was displayed. Second grade was a great help with first grade on counting coins. It has been such a blessing to see the students my class help and support each other.














Before we went on spring break, first and second grade prepared for Holy Week. We created palm branches from torn paper, made books to show the stations of the cross, and learned about the three Holy Days. 

We also had the visiting team for accreditation visit our classrooms the last week before break. The visiting team left me many comments on how well behaved, engaged, and liked many of the ways I teach our combined class. We were all very proud!

Holding her teams tower so it doesn't fall

The only standing tower

During the last week of March, first and second grade participated in a thrilling marshmallow challenge. In this challenge, the students had to design a tower using only a meter of tape, 20 spaghetti noodles, and 1 marshmallow. The students had 12 minutes to design a plan and 18 minutes to build. The challenge was to build the tallest tower with a marshmallow on top. Out of 5 towers only 1 stood tall and standing after the timer went off. As a class, we reflected on why the towers didn't stand and what we would do next time to make it stronger. Many realized that teamwork was key in designing and building. The class had a blast being little engineers! We are going to repeat this challenge again to see if we can successfully carryout our plans. I took a fun video of the kids as they were in the building process.

Standing 17 inches tall

March was a fun filled month of learning!