Apps This Year

Throughout the year the girls have learned a variety of tech skills using many different apps.  Below is a list of the apps that they used this year.

Art Set
BrainPop Jr.
Britannica Kids: Rain forests
Carve-a-Pumpkin
Doodle Buddy
Draw Free
Educreations
Faces iMake
Fotobabble
Hickory Dickory Dock
iMotion
Jungle Coins
JungleSpeak
J'apprends les formes et let couleurs Lite
Line 'em Up
Little Patterns Shapes
Magnabet
MoMA Art Lab
Montessori Crosswords
Montessori Numbers
Motion Math: Hungry Fish
My Story
Mystery Number
Number Sense
Penguin's Family
Pic Collage
Pixie
play2learn French
Scribble Press
Skitch
TeachMe: 1st Grade

Final Publishing Party

Today, the girls celebrated their "how-to" and penguin books with a special group of friends--Mrs. Feiss' 8th grade english class.  As soon as they heard who the special guests were, the girls broke out in a loud (!) cheer.  The 8th grade girls were gracious and extremely complimentary of your daughter's writing pieces...and they were also grateful for a break from preparing for exams.  These two books are in your daughter's backpack; make sure you pull them out and read them tonight!

Rain Forest Play

Here are your future Oscar winners!

Rain Forest Animal Presentations

Here are the presentations from today--we are incredibly proud of your daughters!!!

Ruler Scavenger Hunt & Colorful Cabbage

The girls were introduced to the ruler today.  We reviewed how a ruler is 12 inches long and how not all rulers are made the same--emphasizing that the girls must always measure from the "0" mark (whether it is shown or implied by the end of the ruler).  The girls then went on a scavenger hunt around the room, measuring different items and finding objects of a certain length.

Where does water go in a plant?  That was the question posed to our Pre-First scientists today.   The girls were given cabbage leaves and got to choose from red, yellow, green or blue colored water to put in their vase.  They predicted what their cabbage leaves would look like in one day and sketched it out.  We will observe our leaves tomorrow and record what we see....what do you predict they will look like?

Rain Forest taste test

Today was taste test day!  The girls learned about the different foods that the rain forests provide.  We watched a short video on how chocolate was made many years ago by the indigenous tribes.  After the video, the girls participated in a taste test of different spices that come from the rain forest.  The following spices were used:  Allspice, Cocoa, Black Pepper, Cinnamon, and Vanilla.  Only one spice really threw your daughters....make sure you ask her which one!

Engineering

A big happening in our classroom is the start of our new engineering unit. We started this unit by gathering ideas about engineers and technology (they believed that anything considered "technology" had to be plugged in, amazing).  The girls were shown a stapler and were told that it was technology--by working together, they discovered that anything that was created to solve a problem was "technology".  The girls were then divided into small groups and given a mystery bag.  Inside each bag was an item that they usually would not consider to be "technology".  As a group, the girls had to answer several questions, including, "What does your object do, what problem does it solve, and what material is it made of?"  The group then reported back to the whole class on what they discovered about their object.  Make sure you ask your daughter what technology she found in her bag!