ABC Countdown!

We are on the final countdown to the end of the school year!! We have 25 days left. Since the alphabet has 26 letters we will do the ABC countdown. Each day will be a different letter of the alphabet. We will do something fun each day. Some are dress up days while other days are activities we will do at school. It is totally optional, but I really encourage the kids to participate! :) It will be a fun way to celebrate our last days as 1st graders!! Wow...Where did the year go! Our first day will be this MONDAY! We are going to start with A and B. We will be making an autograph book and dressing in blue. I am attaching the calendar of all the days so you can start planning at home. Thank you for the support and help at home. I know the kids will enjoy doing this. They were thrilled when I told them about it. They helped me brainstorm ideas!

Lost and Found Reminder

Parent(s)

Please check through the lost and found items that have accumulated in
the Elementary foyer for any missing clothing/miscellaneous items for
your child (ren). We are planning to donate all items not claimed by
the end of the school day on Thursday, April 12th.

Thank you!

Kids Blog

http://kidblog.org/MrsNaatjesClass/

This is the link to the kids' blogs. Just click on your child's name. This is a very safe site. I have to approve everything before they will appear. Please be sure to comment on the students hard work. I know they would love to see someone respond to their writing.

Coming VERY soon..... Student Blogging!

The students are busy working on their own blog. We are using a student safe blogging site that is only for our class. This is a great resource for the students to increase their typing skills while working on writing. The kids have been begging to do it. It is a fun and different way for them to expressing their ideas. I will have the links send out to you as soon as possible so you can enjoy their blogs as well.

Snack Calendar

Be sure to check out the April snack calendar!!

CGI Math- Money/Telling Time

We have been working very hard on counting money and learning how to tell time. I was so impressed with the kids. They have done a fabulous job. One activity that we did with telling time was elapsed time. I don't tell the kids what elapsed time is or tell them how to solve it. I just gave them the following problem. Moriah woke up at _____. What time will it be in ____ minutes. The kids had different number choices to pick from depending on their level. I had every student solve this problem correctly. The number choices were (8:00, 30) (8:30: 15) (8:25, 30) (8:25, 52). Almost half of the kids chose 8:25 and 52 minutes later. Some just added the 25+52 and converted that to time while other students used the clocks we have available and added the necessary minutes to the time. It was so powerful and neat to see the kids do it!! I am also so impressed and proud of their thinking!

Art Center Visit

We went to the Art Center to see the Dickinson County All Schools Art Show! Wow did we see some very neat projects. We have some very artist and talented kids in Dickinson County!

Rocks

We are learning about rocks!
Charles came to talk to use about the rock cycle.

We learned there are three types of rocks. We used food to learn the different types. To learn how Igneous rocks are made we melted chocolate and then let it harden in a different shape. To learn about metamorphic rocks we had gum drops. Then we used heat, time and pressure to melt the gum drops into a different shape. The final type of rock is sedimentary. We make a sedimentary cake. It had many different layers! They were all very delicious "rocks"!

Here is the metamorphic rock.

Here is our sedimentary cake.

We also make rocks out of Legos. We worked as a team to create a rock made up of different minerals.

We also checked to see if our own rocks would sink or float in water. After testing, we found out that all the rocks we found sink.

St. Patrick's Day

We enjoyed green popcorn balls while writing St. Patrick's Day stories!

Purple Pancakes

For Dr. Seuss' Birthday we wrote our own poem called Purple Pancakes and Bologna and then tried Purple Pancakes and Bologna. It was surprised, most really like it!!