The Brine Shrimp Have Hatched!!

I'm sorry it's been a while since I've posted.  Enjoy catching up with us now!

Watching our brine shrimp!

Viewing brine shrimp eggs with proscopes.

We began our Living and Non-Living Science Unit last week, and we are very excited!  On Wednesday, we prepared salt water for Jar A and Jar B for each table.  Brine shrimp eggs were put in Jars A and cinnamon in Jars B.  The children did not know which jars had the live specimen!  Today, we used magnifying glasses to make observations, hoping to determine which jars had the living things, and we saw movement in all Jars marked A!  The children guessed that they were frogs because when we looked at them with proscopes hooked up to the computers, they really look like tadpoles.  Tomorrow we will draw observations of their bodies and determine they are brine shrimp.  Later this week we get crickets!  Next week the goldfish come.

This week also marks the beginning of persuasive writing.  The children should have come home with a small green homework assignment to bring in a book they have read.  We will be writing Book Reviews to launch this type of writing.  This also leads us into a Service Learning project all OMS 1st graders will participate in where great student behavior will be rewarded with "money" that will be traded in and used to buy books for a school in Washington, IL that was hit by tornadoes last November.  I will send more information out to you when we have it all organized!

This math unit is mostly on shapes.  It is a short unit, so the test is planned for the middle of next week. We are hitting the addition and subtraction timed tests hard, so please help your child practice these facts at home.

That's all for now.  Enjoy some pictures from the past weeks!

Our "Catching Snowflakes" Bulletin Board… so cute!

Buddy Research on Silkworms as part of our Japan unit.
It doesn't get much cuter than this in first grade!

Planning our "Tokyo Disney" the day before we "visited"… so fun!

Playing "Match my Design".  One student created a design and gave the same pattern block pieces to their partner.  The partner asked questions to figure out how to build the same design.  Then the secret folder was removed!

Creating snowflakes on the iPads.