Growing Caterpillars

As you can see from this picture, these caterpillars are growing like crazy! We have learned that the black pieces left in the cup are the caterpillars’ exoskeletons, which they will shed 4-5 times before they are ready to pupate. The other brown balls are frass, otherwise known as caterpillar poop! You can imagine how the first graders reacted to that new learning. 🙂
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Caterpillars Arrive

It was a very exciting morning in Room 113. Five painted lady caterpillars arrived! They came in their own special container, complete with food. We will watch as these caterpillars grow, shed their exoskeletons five times, weave sticky webs, turn into chrysalides, and then … transform into painted lady butterflies! Our class named these special new friends Crawly, Bob, Cally, Squishy, and Mr. Tickles. Follow this link to learn more about painted lady butterflies.

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Learning Update

Reading: We wrapped up our unit on using both fiction and nonfiction books to learn about special topics. This week, we worked on fluency with our collections. To do this, we practiced reading our books to figure out the tricky words and then we reread, paying close attention to punctuation. We have loved working with partners for the past month and learning about new topics every week.

Math: This past week we studied measurement. We used paperclips to measure the length of objects in our math books and around the room.

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We also learned how to line up measurement tools properly to get the most accurate measurement. We compared length, ordering objects from shortest to longest and longest to shortest. At the end of the week we took our Unit 7 assessment. Look for these assessments coming home soon. Next week, we will start our last math unit on 2-digit addition!!

Science: We’ve had a great week studying the life cycles of insects, reptiles, and amphibians. We’ve noticed that many of the animals followed a pattern of egg, young, and adult before starting over again. We’ve also learned that some babies look like their parents and some do not. 

 

Learning Update

Math: We continued to study shapes during math this week. We learned that shapes can be divided into halves or fourths. It’s important to know how to make equal shares when we are sharing an object like pizza, a cookie or a granola bar with a friend. We also combined triangles, rectangles and squares to form new shapes. Later in the week, we learned the attributes of 3-dimensional shapes, combining them to make new shapes. On Friday, we used this knowledge to build cities with our table teams. This was a great opportunity to work cooperatively. Each group had a mayor who assigned tasks and made sure that everyone got along. These cities were amazing! Some of the structures were a car wash, a church, an apartment building, a sports arena, a tunnel, and a water park.

Writing: During Writer’s Workshop, we continued working on our All About Books. We learned the importance of using headings on each page to tell our reader our big ideas. We also worked on writing great introductions to hook our readers into reading our books. Our introductions always Ask a Question and Tell our Topic, so our audience will want to keep on reading.

Reading: We jumped back into Reading Workshop by checking our prior knowledge of our special topics before reading. This strategy gets our minds ready to make connections to new ideas. We spent time comparing books with our table partners and confirmed facts by finding them in multiple books. We also recorded new vocabulary words that related to our topics. With the help of illustrations and glossaries, we taught our classmates the meanings of these new words. 

Science: This week, we studied the sun and weather. We did some fun experiments and learned how the sun shines on just half of the Earth at a time, how rain falls from clouds, and how a tornado spins. We even simulated a thunderstorm in our class, complete with lightning flashes! These smart first graders are now experts in recognizing severe weather and they also know how to stay safe. Next week, we will start our study of animal life cycles to prepare for our field trip to the zoo.