Grooming Patience through Community, Waiting on God, and the Order of Numbers

Last week, the firsties groomed patience through the Biblical account of Joseph. They learned that although life may seem like a roller coaster, God is ALWAYS working for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Joseph experienced many hardships throughout his life: his brothers sold him into slavery, his boss’ wife slandered him, and he was tossed into prison an innocent man. Although things probably seemed impossible to overcome, Joseph never relinquished his faith. He trusted that through the good and the bad, God was with him, divining a larger purpose for him. He was patient, and waited on God to provide for him.

In art, we completed a collage to illustrate the beginning of Joseph’s story. Each child created their own colorful coat design using tissue paper!

Through readers workshop, the firsties practiced word work. A “must-do” activity allows them to practice word building and solving skills at their own developmental level as they progress through more challenging skills. They can then make a “can-do” choice, including reading, writing, and stamping pattern or sight words, finding, reading and writing words they see around the room, building words with magnetic letters or letter beads, placing words in ABC order, attending to one letter at a time through rainbow writing words, and rolling dice to construct words using an onset and rime. Word Work is the final independent workshop choice first graders learn; next week students will begin rotating through multiple work stations each day! The firsties also focused on identifying and using fiction and nonfiction texts and began using their schema to make connections to the books they are reading.

The firsties are continuing to work on their personal narratives during writers workshop. Last week, they learned to work with a partner to plan their stories, checking for beginning/middle/end, beginning capitals, ending punctuation, logical spelling attempts, and sufficient details. They read one another their stories and used rubrics and checklists to ensure the inclusion of every important part. Students will continue writing and editing their personal narratives while many are publishing stories!

Math Workshop gave the firsties the opportunity to apply what they have learned about decomposing numbers to solve and illustrate word problems, use place value concepts, and demonstrate building and writing numbers in both standard and expanded form. This solidifies their understanding of our base-ten numerical system as well as place value, setting the foundation for working with much larger numbers in the future. They are also continuing to track the days of the year, reinforcing place value concepts by bundling straws in groups of ten and regrouping coins by 5s and 10s. The most popular calendar time activity is still allowing children to create their own difficult questions about the passage of time. What month will it be in 80 days? Do you know? The firsties figured it out last week!

In music, students practiced good singing posture and learned about their diaphragm. They learned that when breathing correctly, their lower abdomen should expand while their shoulders stay still. Take a deep breath. Notice what your chest does. Notice what your shoulders do. For proper breath support, your chest and shoulders should stay relatively still! Is your abdomen moving? If so, good! You’re breathing correctly! The firsties loved pretending to be Hayden’s snooty and proper audience members when listening again to the Surprise Symphony. They learned all about his life, then practiced being surprised when the dynamics changed.

Just like Uncle Jed, we are all part of a community, not only at school but also in our neighborhoods, cities, state, and country. The first graders listened to a story about a little house that was happy living in the country, but as time passed and the city grew around it, it noticed all the changes that were happening that made life different. The firsties compared and contrasted three types of communities: rural, urban, and suburban. They watched video examples of each and described what made each unique. They began working on projects to illustrate each type of community, which will expand into next week, when they will begin the research they need for their class project.

The firsties experienced what they called their favorite PE game on Friday. Ask what happens when you get hit with a rotten egg!!

Faith, Missions, and a Little Science

This week in the Patience Fruit Stand, the firsties were busy learning another example of how God wants us to honor our families. We learned about how Noah honored God and protected his family through his faith and compared his example to the story of Jacob and Esau. We learned that neither son honored his family when Esau exchanged his own birthright for a single bowl of lentil stew and Jacob cheated his brother out of his blessing by deceiving his blind father. Eesh. We realized that we dishonor our families just like these brothers when we are disobedient, have poor attitudes, or seek to deceive one another. The firsties had many great ideas for ways to honor our families, and brainstormed a list to use while writing and drawing their thoughts. To cap off our learning, we cooked our own stew! Although the Bible describes it as lentil stew, we also added vegetables and meat. We thought Esau, a hunter, would have wanted lots of meat in his stew! 🙂 Ask your firstie how they liked it!

                  

We continued using apples to explore science this week, learning about its life cycle, the apple’s parts, and the scientific process. Check out our experiment!

We also cooked up some delicious applesauce. Only 3 firsties didn’t enjoy it. To see who liked it and who didn’t, stop by the graph we created outside our classroom.

This week was Missions Conference, and the students have enjoyed learning about the different countries each missionary or missionary family will be visiting. At Chapel on Friday, the saints got to ask them any question they wanted! We learned that as Christ-followers, we are all missionaries tasked with spreading the Gospel. We don’t even have to leave our neighborhood; we can share the good news of Jesus anywhere!

Check out the tiny missionary in the front. Who wouldn’t follow that cutie straight to Jesus?

Finally, a picture from our indoor PE fun on Friday. We couldn’t use the gym because it was set up for Missions Conference or go outside because of the rain, so we did a fun (and educational – we even got to practice our sight words!) exercise and dance video instead!

Looking forward to next week!