May, the Month of Mary

It's hard to believe the month of May is upon us! We returned from Easter break and "unburied" our ALLELUIA! We will now celebrate for 50 days as we count down the days to our next liturgical celebration: Pentecost. Here's a photo of our ALLELUIA celebration:

To celebrate our return after Easter Sunday, the first graders created "stained glass" Easter crosses by heavily coloring them with crayons then coating them with a layer of oil. The resulting project looks like stained glass, and they are beautiful! We have these hanging in our room as a celebration of our risen Lord and Savior. Here's a peek at one, though it's hard to get the full effect until you see it hanging in the sunlight...

The students did a great job bringing in all kinds of recylable items after Easter break for our culminating Earth Day celebration: RECYCLE BOTS. They got to choose whether to work solo, with a partner, or in a small group to design and assemble their recycle bots. I assisted with some hot glue where needed, but the design and assembly was completed entirely by the students. Once assembled, the students wrote about their recycle bots, including materials used, an illustration, their robots name and special "job", and the sequence of events for assembling it. They absolutely loved this social studies project and were super engaged throughout the entire process!

 We also recycled all of our old or broken blue, green, and white colored crayons. We peeled all the paper off and mixed up the different colors into muffin tins. We then completed a science experiment in the school lunchroom so we could use the oven to observe what our crayons look like solid, as a liquid once heat is applied (in the oven), then again after they've been cooled to room temperature. The result were these beautifully recylced "earth crayons" that we were able to use to color and create with again!

We participated in the all-school Maycrowning the first Friday in May, and Mrs. Blomeke had all the children sing traditional Marian hymns. Bring Flowers of the Fairest was a particular favorite, so here's a link in case your first grader would like to listen to it again! We are very proud of our classmate, J.J., for leading the morning prayer for the whole school outside where we crowned the Mary statue in the SMS Mary Garden.

As a month-long religion focus, we are creating How To Pray the Rosary lapbooks. These lapbooks will have all the prayers of the rosary and all the mysteries of the rosary. Each child is creating theirs from scratch, and it is a true labor of love. We will pray the rosary during the entire month of May, and the children will get to take home their lapbooks and rosary at the end of the month. They are crazy excited to take them home since they've been waiting to do so since October!

Our Science focus this month will be all about space and the planets, the sun and earth's rotation and revolution, and a study of the moon and lunar phases. We will also continue our study of animals, their habitats, and their adaptations for survival. We'll continue learning about how parents and offspring are alike and different, using our science notebooks to document our learning.

In Social Studies, we will be studying American Symbols and will learn the song Wee Sing America - The United States. As we read and study about each symbol, we'll create a section in our "Patriotic Lapbooks" which when finalized will hang in the hallway.

Finally, I wanted everybody to see the Stations of the Cross eggs activity we completed with our Mass Mates prior to Easter. We are thankful for Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection so that we can go to heaven! Alleluia, He is risen!