1st Grade

updated 03/16/2026

1st Grade GATE- Winter 2026 Highlights

What a fun and creative few months it has been for our first graders!

Back in December, students took part in the Snowman Challenge, part of the New Jersey Shore Consortium for Gifted Programs' annual Do You Want to Build Competition. Students designed and built their own snow characters using at least 50% recycled materials, thinking carefully about how their creation could represent one of the Seven Pillars of Character. It was a wonderful opportunity to practice creativity, problem-solving, and engineering design all at once.

Since then, students have been working with the PETS curriculum, which stands for Primary Education Thinking Skills. PETS helps young learners strengthen their critical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving abilities through engaging activities and puzzles. Our lessons have included logic puzzles that encourage both convergent thinking, where students narrow down possibilities to find the best solution, and divergent thinking, where students get creative and explore multiple approaches to a problem. It has been so fun to watch them rise to the challenge!

Students have also loved taking part in seasonal STEM challenges along the way. One of our favorites was the Football STEM Challenge, held right around the time of the Super Bowl. Students designed and built their own field-goal structures and paper footballs, tested their creations, and explored the science and math behind sports. We dug into concepts like trajectory, force, and angles to understand how physics shows up in athletic performance, and the enthusiasm in the room was infectious.

We are looking forward to wrapping up the year with a unit on the moon and a mini research project on famous figures in social studies. Both topics came straight from the students themselves, and they are so excited to explore space and learn about the important people who helped shape our history. Stay tuned!