Earth Day-Wednesday, April 22, 2009

We started our day with bonus P.E. We played High 5 Tag.

We didn’t get to do our math lesson this morning. Lots of children forgot to bring in their stuffed animals. Everyone is going to try to remember real hard to bring one in tomorrow.

Yesterday, we decorated brown paper bags from Shoprite. We brainstormed a list of important messages that we wanted people to know and think about. Then we wrote our message and drew a picture to go along with it. Finally, we colored them so that they would catch people’s eyes. Most people had time to make 2. Ms. Stern collected the bags from all of the first grade classes that participated. At the end of the day, the children helped make groups of 10. The final count was 220 bags. Ms. Stern returned them to Shoprite in Northvale last night so that they could be distributed today. We were so excited to participate!

This morning we went all around the outside of the school looking for garbage. We split up into groups of 4 so that everyone could help. When someone in the group found something that didn’t belong outside, they put it in their bin. Sophia was surprised that there was so much garbage. One group found so much trash that their bin was overflowing. Talking about this made Nolan think of Wall-E because Wall-E had to clean up garbage, too. Carly found 2 slugs on a piece of bark. Bartosz found a few worms. The class found a tire in a tree in the front of the school. Ms. Stern is going to talk to Mrs. Polansky about that. We also found something that felt like plastic in the trunk of the tree. It was yellow and wouldn’t come out. Zoe’s group found lots of cigarettes.

When we came back inside, Ms. Stern emptied all of our bins on the rug. We came up with different categories to sort the garbage into: paper, plastic, cans/metal, glass, and garbage. Everyone got lots of turns sorting the objects. A very large spider crawled out from our pile. Ms. Stern caught it and put it in a container. We passed it around for everyone to look at. Later on, Gianluca discovered a caterpillar on a Vitamin Water bottle. It was very fuzzy and plump. Ms. Stern collected that one too so that everyone could take a peek. There were lots of other bugs that found their way inside with us. Not everyone was a fan of the insects. After all of the materials were sorted, we found lots of plastic bottles, some paper, some glass, some metal, and lots of garbage that couldn’t be recycled. We also found 2 lacrosse balls that we’re going to try to reuse instead of throwing them away.

Mrs. Piteo was absent today. Mrs. Spagnolo was our substitute. She read us Curious George Gets a Medal. Afterwards, we drew pictures of our favorite part and then we wrote 3 sentences about it.

During writing we had more time to write stories of our own choosing. Some people are working with partners. Lots of people wanted to work together yesterday. We found out that writing together is a big challenge!

From Ms. Stern: Tomorrow is Take Your Child to Work Day. Please let me know if you plan on participating. Thanks!