Less than 2 WEEKS!

Hello friends and welcome to FIRST GRADE! Let me introduce myself to you and our classroom page. My name is Miss Pedrini and I am the first grade teacher at Visitation Catholic STEM Academy. I've been teaching first grade for four years at Vis. I like to inform you weekly about what we are doing in class. This class website allows you and your family to join in on the fun and see what we are doing in the classroom. Not only can you spy on what we are doing in class through my posts but there is also fun links for you. Along the top of the page there are a few different tabs you can click on....I encourage you to click on them all to get yourself familiar with the website. I will post our class newsletters, homework, school student of the month, educational websites online, and of course PICTURES! I will be updating new photos of our NEW CLASSROOM soon for you to see. There has been a big transformation from WILD ANIMALS to lots of BRIGHT COLORS. I look forward to meeting all my new friends on the first day of school. See you soon :)

Insects....We LOVE BUGS!

Science is always my classes favorite subject. For our next unit we studied insects. This means that we had many living creatures in our classroom. Did I mention that I am afraid of bugs? The lesson I's supposed to teach the students is that we should care for God's creations and not to SMASH insects we see outside or in our homes. This was a difficult one for me! Our other lesson was to learn about the life cycle of insects and watch them change through the stages.

I purchased meal worms for our first insect pet. Students were introduced to their meal worms and we discussed how to care for them. I was surprised that many of the students wanted to hold them and touch them. I encouraged this as I distributed them into their containers with a spoon (I was afraid to touch them). Each day we recorded changes they went through in our science journals. We drew illustrations and discussed their different body parts and what the insect used them for. I didn't tell the students what the meal worms would change into and they were quite surprised when they started making big changes. Our meal worms shed their skin many times and eventually changed into a pupa. This was a neat transformation for the students and a few students got to see theirs change right before their eyes. One day a student came back from the weekend and found that he no longer had a pupa and that a beetle was crawling around in his container. The word got out that day that meal worms are the larva stage of a beetle. We were lucky enough to watch a few under the document camera make the change from pupa to beetle. The students loved carrying their beetle around. Once the whole class had a beetle, I had them take them home to release in their gardens or to keep as a pet.

What a fun experience!

Love is in the air!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! First and second grade loved sharing special treats and love letters to each other. We made fun Minion bags that said, "Love you a Minion." We even had a special visitor for Valentine's Day and we made him a purple minion bag.

Superbowl is OURS! Go Hawks!

First and second grade has loved following the Seahawk's journey to the big win at the Super Bowl. Every day students would come up to me and chat about games they've watched on TV or ones they've been able to go and see at the field. Every math problem has seemed to be about the Seahawks and their colors have been worn by our whole school each game day. You could only imagine what the first day back to school was like after they won the Super Bowl! We had so much fun cheering them on and we continue to have fun supporting our home team.

Weird SCIENCE!

Today we had an exciting lesson about liquids. We've been studying solids and liquids for the past few weeks and in today's lesson, we observed oil and water. Students made a hypothesis of what they thought would happen when we put colored ice cubes (a solid) into oil (a liquid). Students used their prior knowledge of ice and water and made some great generalizations of what they thought would happen. Once we made these predictions, we poured oil into a large vase and dropped in about 6-8 ice cubes. Students quickly observed that the colored ice began to melt and that it didn't mix with the oil. Each drop of water slowly moved through the oil as a bubble to the bottom. Students came to the realization that the water must be heavier to fall to the bottom and that the oil was lighter. I helped scaffold the students to come to the conclusion that oil and water don't mix and that is why the oil never changed colors. Many students predicted that when the colored ice would melt, it would change the color of the oil. Students thought this was fun but they had even more fun with the next activity....we used the ice cubes to water color. Each student got a special glove to wear for holding the ice cube. Not only did the glove help their hand stay warm but it prevented them from getting the dye on their hands. We completed the lesson with only a drop or two of color on one or two students shirts. I even managed to stay completely color free while wearing a white blouse...."not sure how that happened." It must have been because I begged them to keep their hands to themselves...haha and it worked! We had such a blast today learning about weird science!

I'm explaining the importance of the glove and that if we touch the ice without it...we'll get color everywhere.

This was the first observation the students made of the ice and oil being put together.

Painting with colored ice cubes...who would have thought?

Our class loves MINIONS!

They begged to pretend like they were going to touch the bubbles...silly friends!

Engineering BOATS!!!!

First and second grade used the engineering design process to design and build boats. The students started with step 1 where we talked about problems or constraints we would have building. I told the class they'd only get paper to build their boats. Many students raised their hands and asked if they could use glue too. We discussed why glue wouldn't be a good tool in building our boats and they suggested tape. We added tape to their materials. Next, they said they needed scissors so they could cut paper and the tape when it was difficult to tear. We added scissors to their materials. Then we moved on to step 2, where we brainstormed ideas. Then we took our ideas and moved on to step 3, where we made a plan. After each student made a design plan they were permitted to build, which is step 4. After each student built their boat, we moved on to step 5, where we tested our boats.

Our purpose of building the boats was to use air to move them. In science we've learned that air takes up space, can be compressed or create pressure, and can move an object. We thought we'd put a fun twist on moving our boats and race our classmates. We created a bracket for racing and currently we have completed round one. We are now moving on to round two to see who our grand champion is.

Some boats sunk, wouldn't move, or got too wet. We discussed each students design and why these problems occurred. I told the students that engineers designs don't always workout the first time and that they have to go back to step one in the engineering design process and brainstorm a new plan for their boat using the knowledge they found out from testing it.

I am excited to share with you the photos from this STEM event in the WILD First and Second Grade! They should be posted soon.

What kind of weather will we have today, class? Let's learn about WEATHER!

Testing wind levels with our anemometer.

Hello friends! First and second grade has had fun with our science unit, Air and Weather. We are learning about weather. We discussed all the weather words we knew, which was a lot! We started a weather journal where we write about what the weather looks like and feels like. Students have to include as many weather words as they can. We watched a fun video and learned about the job of a meteorologist. Each morning during our calendar activities, our paw student chooses a boy and a girl to be our meteorologist for the day. They predict what the weather is going to be like by looking in the sky at the clouds and seeing what type we have as well as what color, we look at the ground to check for water, we look at the trees to see if they are moving, and just the overall look of outside. Meteorologists uses special tools and we learned about those too. We made our very own anemometer to test different wind levels. The students counted to see the difference of the times it spun for each wind level. We had a blast doing this activity! We are going to continue learning about air and weather. I cannot wait until we get to make airplanes and parachutes. It is one of my favorite activities.

Writing in my weather journal!

The class is checking out how wind changes the direction of rain. How fun!!!

Working with our study buddy!

Our first Mass was two weeks ago and we were introduced to our new eighth grade buddies. First and second grade has over double the amount of students so a few of the eighth graders have 2-3 buddies. Our study buddies help us with reading every Friday and with following directions and learning at Mass. They sometimes help us with practicing prayers, spelling, finish work, or special religion activities. We are so thankful to have them in our classroom each week and cherish every moment with them. They truly are the role models of the school and our little WILD ones look up to them.

We celebrated our very first birthday, Daniel Jay was born to be WILD! Daniel's mom brought us special treats that the students all loved. Who wouldn't love chocolate pudding with Oreo crumbs and worms coming out of it? It was truly a WILD treat! 

I am excited to continue sharing about our WILD learning adventures in the Wild First and Second Grade. Hope to see you all at back to school night tomorrow at 6:00. We will be meeting in the cafeteria. At a back to school night you will learn about our daily classroom procedures, student/parent expectations, curriculum, and state standards your child will be learning. It is a very important night for us all! Visitation Catholic STEM Academy is a partnership of teachers, parents, and students. I cannot wait to see you all!