We’ve spent a bit of time learning about what causes day and night, also about the effect the sun and moon has on the earth. We read the story “Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow” and created rotating earth spinning wheels. On the spinning wheels we marked where we live, and watched how we move from day to night.
As we continue on with our day & night unit we read the story “Happy Birthday Moon” and talked about the cycles of the moon for each month. Then we made a birthday cake for the moon and put candles with the months in the right order. We also learned about nocturnal animals and made pine-cone owls.
Today we talked more about the differences between the day and night. We read the book “Can’t You Sleep Little Bear” and made easy read mini books called “Who is Sleeping?”
We watched a day and night educational video on youtube. Then we played some related games that show what happens when day turns into night and night turns into day. Finally students illustrated what they learned by coloring half of a house during the day, and half of a house during the night.
Our Title 1 team put on a pajama party and invited parents to come and read to our class. This also helped launch our class into our day & night science unit. We started out by enjoying cereal for snack and then for drop everything and read, students got to snuggle with their pillows and stuffed animals.
Finally our class built blanket forts, listened to a bedtime story on the SMART board and had our parents read to us at the forts.
Then starting this week we learned about what causes day & night. We read a non-fiction book about what makes day and night and watched a video on youtube about how the earth rotates and revolves around the sun.
As a class, we created a venn diagram that show things you can see in the sky during the day and during the night. Then the class filled out their own venn diagram in a cut and paste activity. At the science center students got to explore the concepts of day and night using a globe.
This week our focus has been what makes day and what makes night. Students learned about how the earth rotates on it’s axis and this is what causes day and night. We read two stories about day and night (What Makes Day and Night by Franklyn M. Branley and Moongame by Frank Asch).
We then took what we’ve learned so far to make a sequence map illustrating different times of day and night. I got this from April Larremore’s Day and Night Flowmap. We also did a day and night venn diagram were, students compared different things that can be seen in the daytime and nighttime. I got the venn diagram from Class of Kinders TpT’s website.
This past week we started our new unit about the sky and the difference between daytime and nigh time. To begin our new unit we started learning about the sun and the importance the sun plays on our planet. We read a nonfiction book called “The Sun: Our Nearest Star” and watched a presentation on BrainPop. We also created a circle map, made our own illustrations, and wrote sentences. 1st grade worked on their own paper with a topic sentence and two details.
The next day we created our own class sun dial by putting a tall stick in the snow and marking where the shadow of the stick ends at various times throughout the day.
