Easter is just around the corner and to celebrate, 1st grade participated in a spring STEM activity. Since we have the exact same number of boys and girls, we made this one a Boys vs. Girls showdown! Groups of three were given their project contrainsts: 20 popsicle sticks, 3 pipecleaners, scissors, 5 plastic Easter eggs and a roll of tape. They were given 25 minutes to construct an Easter basket with a handle that would successfully transport five Easter eggs from the start line to the finish line. Winners of each heat, would get another egg to place in their basket. The winner would be determined by who could get over the finish line the quickest, without dropping any eggs. And the winner of the 2018 Easter Egg Race is…. A TIE! I called it a tie with eight eggs. Both teams had eight eggs in their baskets, but dropped before crossing the finish line.

St. Patrick's Day STEM...so many possibilities! We decided to celebrate the holiday making Lucky Charm catapults! First grade had a blast with this STEM project and a few even successful landed their marshmallows in their target! Working in groups of three, students built a catapult out of 9 popsicle sticks, rubber bands and a spoon. Once successful, they had to calculate where their marshmallows would land when they were catapulted and adjust their catapult according to their findings.

First grade put a little spin on learning ABC Fiction shelf order this month by using Dash the robot! We learned the organization of the library fiction shelves. We discussed how books go on the shelves by using the author's last name. We pretended that we were all authors and lined our books up on the shelves according to our last names. After practicing with real books, we decided to turn some cups into books and code Dash to go to the cups in order as the would appear on the shelf. Lots of fun while learning alphabetical order!

Cold weather, lots of snow and lots of delays! That is what January brought us! What a great time to review elements of fiction books and nonfiction books. To make it a little more fun, we made categories by writing on our tables. (The students think writing on the tables is the coolest thing ever!) . Each table was given a list of fiction and nonfiction book topics and had to decide where they went by placing them on the corresponding table. These kids are experts!!

Every year, the first week of December is Computer Science Education week. To celebrate, tens of millions of students in 180+ countries around the world participate in Hour of Code. The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts. We celebrated this year by coding mice to go through student designed mazes. We currently have 2 code and go mouse robot sets in our library. Our local intermediate unit has a lending library where I was able to borrow 4 more from . Before the students were allowed to program the mouse, they had to lay out the program on the table using arrow cards. Once they understood the direction the robot needed to go, they were able to code the mouse to move from start to the cheese at the end of the maze. They had so much fun coding their mice!

First grade took a trip to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this month! Not really, but using green screen technology it really looks like they were they riding on a float! Students were introduced to the story behind this tradition by reading "Balloons Over Broadway", which tells the story Tony Sarg, who first invented these “upside-down puppets”. The story shows his dedication and his long-lasting gift to America—the inspired helium balloons that would become the trademark of Macy’s Parade. First grade got to then take their picture in front of the green screen and learned how to apply a picture to a green background to make it look like they were really there! They drew the parade and placed themselves in their drawn picture. Check out a few of them here!

We started the month of October discussing the elements of Folk Tales and Fairy Tales. We read some popular ones that most students have already heard such as, "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Three Little Pigs". We turned "The Three Little Pigs" into a STEM project by building their houses. Students used toothpicks to build the straw house, wooden popsicle sticks to build the wood house, and Legos to build the brick house. Students then filmed the story using puppets in front of a green background. We then put a background of the woods onto the green background. They had such a fun time with this! They especially loved being the big, bad wolf and blowing down the houses!