Silent e

I'm happy to report that our 1st grade kids have really gotten a hang of long vowels with silent e. Our lessons were also great review for the 2nd graders. The class especially enjoyed watching the learning videos which I included down below as well as some of the activities we did and poems we read in class. (Click on the images below to access free printables for each of the activities and poems.)

Veterans Day

Since we had school today, we spent a good amount of our time learning about Veterans Day. Today's mini unit was perfect timing, considering that we just finished up our Symbols of America unit last week. Today we learned what a Veteran is and even shared about people that we know who have served in the past. We brainstormed character traits of those who serve in our military. We watched short video segments explaining why we have Veterans Day and then listened to a song honoring our Veterans. At 11:11 A.M. we took a moment of silence to thank God for those who have served and to protect those who currently serve. We learned important vocabulary related to Veterans, and we put them in ABC order and looked for them in a word search. At the end of the day we wrote letters of thanks so someone we know that is in the military or who has served in the past.

Here is a video of the song we listened to in class. (Posting because several kids asked so they could watch and learn it at home.)

Pumpkin Studies, Part 2

Here a some pictures from our pumpkin investigation. The kids had the best time making various predictions about our pumpkin and then seeing how close they were to the actual measurements. Predictions included the pumpkin's height, weight, number of ribs, number of seeds, and whether the pumpkin would sink or float in water. The kids' favorite part of our investigation was seeing the pumpkin float in water! I was as shocked as they were when the pumpkin floated. Pulling seeds out of the pumpkin's wet, sticky flesh was a popular activity as well. Can you believe we counted more than 300 seeds from our small pumpkin?

Trying to estimate how much the pumpkin weighs.



The class worked in pairs to separate the pumpkin seeds from the stringy, mushy flesh.

After separating seeds from the flesh, the kids counted their seeds.
One pair had only 22 seeds. Another pair counted 54.

After we cleaned up our pumpkin the mess from our investigation, the kids estimated how many pumpkin candies were in our estimation jar. Three kids came pretty close. They estimated that there were 50 pumpkin candies, and there were 58 in the container.