Exploring honeybees and data

We began our study of honeybees in the IMC by asking these questions: What does a honeybee look like? Where does it live? Who are its enemies? What does a honeybee eat? What are honeybees' jobs? We then looked through books to find our answers and took notes. Ask your child which question he/she investigated and what new information he/she learned about honeybees!

Look what the Feldman family found in their tree! 

Honeycomb Cells

Dripping with yummy honey.

ABC Humane Wildlife Control saved some of the honeycomb and mounted it in a frame.

Look what else ABC Humane Wildlife Company gave the Feldmans!

Thank you to the Feldman family for sharing their artifacts. We have enjoyed seeing the honeycomb up close and smelling the delicious honey!

Collecting Data and Graphing

We identified our task, titled our graphs, sorted and counted, and represented our data in bar graph form so we could analyze our results. Ask your child what questions they asked their partners about the results!

What to do with a tile floor?

Our exploration of numbers became life size today as we created and worked with our very large 120s chart! Ask your child what numbers and patterns he/she helped create.

First Grade Thinking and Questioning

We began our first author study! Ms. Parker helped us get excited about Dr. Seuss and his many books. We learned some new information about Dr. Seuss as an author and created a long list of questions. There is much more we want to know!

Ask you child: "What do you now know about Dr. Seuss that you didn't know before? What do you want to find out about Dr. Seuss?

Meet Dudley. He is a detective introduced to us by Ms. Ozawa. He helps us practice our deductive thinking skills. We have participated in many activities where we look for clues, resist the urge to jump to conclusions, and come up with the one right answer. We even earned our detective badges after helping him determine the mystery creatures living in Crystal Pond Woods!

Ask your child how looking at the clues in the picture helped him/her figure out the many questions surrounding this celebration. What kind of a party? Who is celebrating? Which one is Bill? What season is it? How do you know?

Ask your child about this illustration. 

Just How Many Pennies Are There?

Our challenge was to work as a group to first estimate, and then count, how many pennies were in the middle of our table. The challenge prompted many questions, strategies, and revisions as we explored the best way to count this large number of pennies. Ask your child how his/her group approached this challenge. Ask what he/she would do differently next time. 

First Days of First Grade

Our first few days of first grade were full of new experiences, getting to know one another, and exploration. It is just the beginning of an exciting new year together!

Our Portrait Gallery

I look forward to seeing everyone at Open House on Thursday, August 29th. When you come into our classroom, be sure to glance at our Portrait Gallery and see if you can guess your child's self-portrait. We also invite you to read your child's summer story, find a familiar smiling face, and peek in your child's cubby. 

As a reminder, you may sign up during open house for both fall and spring parent-teacher conferences. Sign up sheets will be in our classroom.

Welcome to First Grade!

I am looking forward to seeing you on the first day of school and being together as a class. How nice it will be to spend time learning more about each other as we begin first grade together. Would you please bring a favorite book to school sometime during the first week? We will share your book with the class. I can't wait to see you on the 22nd!