First Grade Tree Project

All of the first grade students have had the opportunity this year to observe a pecan tree on our playground.  We talked about the things that we needed to notice as good observers and scientists as we drew pictures, recorded the temperature at the time of our observations and did rubbings of the bark.  A small group then met to research "facts" about pecan trees which we then made into the voicethread that follows this post.  After looking at the voicethread click on the next link to do activities about nature and trees. 

Voicethread:
First Grade Tree Project

Nature Activities

Tree Activities

Happy 165th Birthday to St. Mary's!

Although this post is a bit late, I wanted to share a few photos that I took on the day of our celebration.  It was great fun to gather together with the entire school to acknowledge our history and make wishes for our future.  Here is to many more birthday's for SMS!

Photo slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Sumdog and another math activity...

Several of our St. Mary's Lower School classrooms enjoyed participating in a President's Day TN state-wide contest using the Sumdog.com math website.  Daily winners were announced based on the number of questions accurately answered testing math facts and operations problems (and St. Mary's was one of the daily school winners!).  A total of 106 students from St. Mary's answered 136,892 questions correctly between them!  The high scoring students in 2nd-4th grades were recently recognized during chapel.  Congratulations to our girls!

Here is something fun to do for Easter using jellybeans:))

Jellybean Puzzlers:

Psst: bet you didn’t know this, but we have it on good authority. The Easter Bunny has a fondness for MATH!

This year, when you celebrate your holiday, try taking out this activity on Easter morning…before your child has munched through all his Easter Basket candy, that is! The brain teaser math problems below are written for different colors of jelly beans, but any three kinds of candy will work just fine, as long as they are different.

What You Need:

• Jellybean puzzler problems
• Pencil

What You Do:

In each puzzle below, each basket is made of purple, pink, and yellow jellybeans. But in each one, the number of beans of each color will be different. Use the clues to figure out how many of each color will be in each basket!

Basket #1:

3 purple Jellybeans

Twice as many pink jellybeans as purple ones

12 Jellybeans in all

Basket #2:

This basket contains 16 jellybeans

½ of the beans are pink

¼ of the beans are yellow

Basket #3:

There are at 12 jellybeans in this basket

There is one more purple than yellow jellybean

There is one more yellow than pink jellybean

Basket #4:

½ of the jellybeans in this basket are yellow

3 of the jellybeans are purple

There are double as many yellow jellybeans as there are purple ones

Basket #5:

There are 3 times as many yellow jellybeans as pink ones

There is one more purple bean than yellow ones

There are 15 beans in all

When you’re done with our puzzlers, can you make up your own?

What’s Going On: You don’t need to use fancy terms or anything, but this math puzzle invites your kids to practice, hands-on, the very important fundamental concepts of ratio and proportion. We use these concepts all the time in math and in science; now’s a great time to help them make clear, natural sense!  

Answers: Basket 1: 3 purple, 6 pink, 3 yellow; Basket 2: 8 pink, 4 yellow, 4 purple; Basket 3: 4 yellow, 5 purple, 3 pink; Basket 4: 3 purple, 6 yellow, 3 pink;  5. 2 pink; 6 yellow; 7 purple

By Julie Williams

Julie Williams, M.A. Education, taught middle and high school History and English for seventeen years. Since then, she has volunteered in elementary classrooms while raising her two sons and earning a master's in school administration. She has also been a leader in her local PTA.

From Education.com

Think Green Book Club

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The Third Grade Book club organizers chose to "Think Green" for our meeting this month.  In addition to recognizing St. Patrick's Day we looked at several books on recycling and the environment that Mrs. Schwartz shared with us.  The students also brought books to "recycle" by sharing them with young people at a church or the Neighborhood school.  We brainstormed several agencies and will collect books through the end of March for donation. 

Here are some fun activities you can do to celebrate St. Patrick's Day - St. Patrick's Day activities

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss Website

Moli Stone Unit

It has been so much fun learning about place value and number systems with a group of third grade students.  Below are several websites that give additional information on some of the ones that we studied.  Enjoy looking at them and let me know about the interesting things that you discover!

Egyptian Hieroglyphics
Egyptian numbers
Writing with Egytian symbols
Egyptology Page
Hindu-Arabic System
History of Hindu-Arabic System
Chinese Numbers

President's Day Freebie

In honor of President's Day tomorrow, the Britannica Kids: US Presidents app for iPhone and iPads is free until 2/20/12 at midnight (it is usually $2.99).
The app can be found in the itunes store at Britannica Kids: US Presidents.

It is a great way to learn about the history of our country and our leaders.  Enjoy your day off:))