It's Fun to Read with a Buddy!

A Visit from Chewonki!

Chewonki is an environmental education organization based in Wiscasset. Each year, Skillin is fortunate to have teachers from Chewonki visit each grade level for an hour long program about various topics. The program in first grade is called, "Fur, Feathers, and Feet". Here is what our teacher, Matt, taught us and showed us:

Mammals
Breathe air, have fur or hair, are warm blooded, mammals are born alive, drink milk...we are mammals!
 

                                                    Beaver paw - webbed for swimming

                                         Caribou's hooves help them to run fast on their toes

                                                   Echo the bat eating meal worms

                    A bear getting his under fur (for warmth) and guard fur (waterproof) put on

                                                                    A friendly bear!


Birds
Feathers for camouflage and to fly, have a beak, hatched from eggs

                 Bird skulls with different shaped beaks - long and thin feet for walking in the water
 

          Downy feathers keep a bird warm and outer feathers to fly and camouflage - cute birdie! 
 

                                                   Peepers the duck (thinks he's a person!)

                                                   A fun way to feel fur, feather, and feet!

If you would like to learn more about Chewonki, check them out here: Chewonki

Looking to Volunteer?

Volunteer Training Sessions:

Tuesday, Oct. 13, 6:00 - 6:30 PM, South Portland High School
Thursday, Oct. 15, 6:00 - 6:30 PM, South Portland High School

These are in addition to the Volunteer Training sessions scheduled on a regular monthly basis:

Monday, October 19, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons  
Tuesday, November 3, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Wednesday, December 2, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Thursday, January 7, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Monday, February 8, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Tuesday, March 8, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Wednesday, April 6, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Thursday, May 5, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Tuesday, May 31, 9 AM, SPHS Learning Commons
Tuesday, May 31, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons
Wednesday, June 1, 9 AM, SPHS Learning Commons
Wednesday, June 1, 6 PM, SPHS Learning Commons


All sessions are open to anyone, no registration required. 


FMI, pls. contact Molly Aldrich, 773-5629, ext. 3432 or aldricmo@spsd.org

Peace Day and Peace Flags

Yesterday Skillin School celebrated International Peace Day (the actual date is September 21st). It was celebrated with books and songs of peace and making "peace flags" to help spread peace in our community and the world. The peace flags were placed outside in the circle where we gathered as a school at the end of the day. In our classroom we also linked peace to words we have been learning: responsibility, cooperation, and assertion.

Look at these happy, peaceful kids!

C is for Cooperation!

Today we read the book, Ribbit Rabbit by Candace Ryan.

It's the story of a frog and rabbit who are BEST friends. They love to play together but....they don't always get along. Uh-oh. In the end, they learn to work together, share their things, and support each other. That sounds like cooperation!! These are things we do in the classroom, but it's nice to have friendly reminders here and there. Also, there are ways of cooperating that you may not have thought about. Check out the photos of our cooperation activity:

Caron's kids love Kids A-Z!

The students were excited to get on Kids A-Z (formally known as Raz-kids) Friday morning! We read several books on my account to practice using the site earlier in the week. We also took the quizzes to test our comprehension. Kids A-Z is a fun, engaging way to learn to read, practice reading, practice comprehension, and explore fiction and nonfiction books.

To access Kids A-Z at home:  Kids A-Z
Teacher: mcaron4

Happy Reading!

Very focused! 

 Choosing a book...

 Reading and taking a quiz.

Setting up our Classroom Community

Establishing rules in the classroom is very important. The process included many steps. We started with a chart titled: In first grade we... We added post-its to it when we thought of something that we do in first grade. Then, we grouped the post-its based on things that were the same. We came up with four groups: cleaning up, being quiet when supposed to, caring and kindness, and keep trying. Next, we looked at our school rules to see how they compared to what we had so far. We decided to use the same words because our groups fit into those groups! You can see our process on the chart paper and the finished rules written neatly with our hands pledging to follow them.

The students felt very strongly about including the "keep trying" group, but we decided that those things are not necessarily rules. That's why they are listed below the rules as things we will also do in the classroom and school.

Here are some photos of MORE work we did during the week. We practiced our new rules and kept trying for each of these activities!