Spring Break Vacation? Bring back some sand!

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Here is a guest post from our science teacher, Ms. Svedlund.

Simple Science of Sand

Sand is one-of-a-kind, like a fingerprint. The sand found on every beach is unique, a product of its local environment. It articulates a story from hundreds to thousands to millions of years of weathering, breakdown, and erosion. Grains have been tossed around by waves or washed through a watershed. Sand tells us information about rock types, shelled organisms, waves, and biota from the region it is found. Beaches are a river of sand, regardless of whether it is found on the slope of an ocean, lake, or stream.

Help us build our story! If you are headed somewhere over spring break and can grab a sample to add to the Lower School science lab collection, we’d appreciate it. We are collecting sand samples from around the world. A good sample is about a quarter of a cup, or about a baby food jar size amount, of dry beach sand – collected in a plastic baggie is great. Thank you, and Happy Spring Break!

 

Practicing for our play!

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We have begun working on our musical play!  We will perform an adaptation of the book, “Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed” with the Kindergarten class in conjunction with our Swooper Citizens curriculum.  Mark your calendars for April 25th.

We have read through the script once together and we are working on the songs.  I will send the script home over Spring Break.  Please help your child practice their lines and any solo or small group singing noted in the script.  (Should you need access to a digital copy of the script, you can find one on our “Useful Documents” page above.) Everyone will sing part of all of the songs, so it would be helpful to listen and practice those,too. We’ve modified the lyrics to some classics, so it’s likely that you’ll know the tune of at least one. You can find our special lyrics within the script.  The videos below will help you with the tune.  Also, at the end of this post, you can find a special sneak peek!

 

Here’s your special sneak peek!

Piano Performances

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This morning, we were treated to several student performances during Tecolote Tuesday.  Two of the featured performers were first graders!  They did a great job playing piano in front of the whole school. (The eager hands you see in the background are volunteers to name the composer and title of the piece being played.)

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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The first graders arrived this morning to find that our classroom had been visited by a little man in green last night.  It looked like he’d had some fun and gotten into a bit of mischief.  Here’s the message he left on our whiteboard:

Do you see how our class dog, Stanley, was decorated?

After putting everything in our classroom right, we had some St. Patrick’s Day fun of our own.

 

It’s a tradition of ours in first grade to do “rainbow math” on St. Patrick’s Day.  (This is also a great opportunity for the students to practice making and interpreting graphs!)  Each student was given a small amount of Skittles and then asked to sort and graph them by color.  The students had to consider how to scale the y-axis of their graphs to best represent the amounts they had. Of course, our hard work was rewarded by tasting a small portion of the samples.

Just before lunch, we were treated to a bagpipe performance by Tom Strelich, which Ms. Markstrum organized.  Here’s some information about Mr. Strelich:

Tom Strelich is the Pipe Major of the Santa Barbara Sheriff Pipe & Drum Corps, a volunteer element of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.  Local pipers and drummers started the band in 2007, and it is the only Law Enforcement pipe band between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  It is open to anybody interested learning to play, learn, and participate.  Instruction is provided free of charge by members of the band.  Learn the Great Highland Bagpipe  – musical talent is nice, but stubbornness is more valuable. Learn the Scottish Snare, Tenor, Bass Drum, or even an African Djembe – if you can drum on a desk, you qualify.

Visit www.sbbagpipers.com for more information.

We felt very lucky to experience such a fun and festive day!

(Consider lowering your volume before starting this video.)

Creative Service Learning

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Creativity is our Swooper Citizens theme for the month of March.  The first grade and Kindergarten classes are practicing creativity in art, science, music, writing, and problem solving, and we want to help others tap into their creativity, too!  For our service learning project this month, we are collecting art and craft supplies to put together art kits for the Pediatrics Department at Cottage Hospital.

This is where you come in!  Please read through the list below and consider donating one or more of the items we brainstormed.  We will assemble the kits on Tuesday, March 21st, so please send any donations to school by then.  We really appreciate your help!

You can download a copy of this list on the Documents page linked at the top of the blog, in case you want to bring it on your next shopping trip.  Thank you for helping!

Partner Prefix Face-Off!

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We have been learning about prefixes this week.  After figuring out how to attach prefixes to root words to make a new word, we were ready to discuss the meaning of many common prefixes.  For example, by discussing the meanings of “replay,” “reread,” and “review,” we figured out that “re-” must mean, “do it again!”

Next, we played a great game which required the students to think of multiple words beginning with some of the prefixes we discussed.   Some students chose to make the game a competitive race while others decided they were happy playing cooperatively.  Either way, this was fun learning!

 

Using a special die with one prefix per side, students worked in partners to roll a prefix, think of a word containing that prefix, and record it on their game sheet.

Partners could challenge each other if the word they recorded was not familiar to them.  If playing competitively, the first person to fill in his or her sheet was the winner.

This game sparked some great conversation, as students figured out that, for example, even though “Disneyland” begins with “dis,” it is not a prefix because “neyland” isn’t a root word… and, as one student explained, Disneyland doesn’t mean, “Not -neyland.”

Here are some of the words recorded during the game:

nonfat, uncover, reread, impossible, replay, disqualified

unhappy, preschool, discover, immature

 

prefix, disable, impossible