Swooptopia

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A panoramic view of Swooptopia

Each year, Mrs. Green’s 3rd grade classroom is transformed into the city of Swooptopia.  3rd grade students create businesses and make storefronts out of giant cardboard boxes.  They also take on roles such as mayor, banker, and sheriff.  You can read more about their process on Mrs. Green’s blog here: Swooptopia Open For Business

Today, we were invited to visit Swooptopia.  Swooptopia’s banker gave each first grader $30 to spend during our visit.

Students visit a pet grooming business

When we arrived, the students found that they could choose  to spend their money in a variety of ways:  renting stuffed animal pets to snuggle, creating art and paper doll fashions, playing games such as mini-basketball and beanbag toss, or buying flowers in vases.  We had a blast!

Playing min-basketball

Purchasing flowers at the florist shop

Renting pets to play with

The game arcade

Enjoying many of the items for sale or rent

Art and Fashion shop

 

First Grade Engineers

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Today we began an exciting engineering project!  The first grade class will be working with Mr. Moore’s engineering class from the Upper School to design and create a piece for the Lower School’s magnawall.  This project was originally created by Mrs. Delwiche and Mr. Moore.  The Kindergarteners collaborated with Mr. Moore’s students in the fall.  Now it’s our turn!

Students experiment with existing magnawall pieces

The magnawall is a magnetic surface on the fence near our science lab on which students can create marble runs.  We have several chutes, curves, rings and other pieces already, but our students have the opportunity to get creative and dream up entirely new pieces.

Today, the students met in teams to begin dreaming up their ideas.  They were able to sketch and describe their ideas, including the size, color, shape, and function of the piece.

A student begins sketching her idea

The Upper School students will help the first graders make their design a reality using the 3D printer.  We will video chat with them a few times throughout the process before meeting in person one final time to see our finished products.

You can hear about some of the ideas below:

Fraction Pizzeria

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We are working with fractions right now, which can be a challenging concept for first graders.  Our class has been working hard to understand how to write, read, and represent fractions with pictures.  The third grade class is also working with fractions at their level, so Mrs. Green and I decided to pair our classes for a fun fraction pizza event.

Each first grader worked with a third grader.  They took on the roles of pizza chefs at Fraction Pizzeria.  Mrs. Green and I were the restaurant managers, and we communicated our customers’ orders to the chefs.  The orders were placed in fractional form so that, for example, the chefs were asked to create a pizza that might be 2/8 mushrooms, 2/8 peppers, 1/8 pepperoni, and 3/8 onion.  The third graders helped the first graders understand that the denominator shows how many pieces of pizza should be cut and the numerator shows how many pieces get that particular topping.

Finished pizzas displayed in our classroom windows

We followed up this activity in our classroom today by analyzing some pre-made “pizzas” and naming the fractions they represented.  Next week, we will work with fractions of a set of items.