Life in First: Town Maps, Pumpkin Glyph, and the Farm

Town Maps, Pumpkin Glyph, and the Farm

We had a VERY busy and hectic schedule this week! We had the OLSAT Monday – Wednesday and a field trip to the farm on Thursday. It was a bit difficult to accomplish as much as we would normally, but I think we did pretty good!

Monday we started a town map project (as mentioned in my previous post. We were able to finish our maps yesterday… which made me SUPER happy! This was a new activity for me- I thought of it as I was looking at clip art sets from Lettering Delights. I saw a cute set called All around town that had a variety of buildings, and then I immediately thought to have each student make a town map. On Monday they glued black paper strips onto a large piece of card stock as roads, then they began cutting out the buildings and gluing them onto their ‘map’. We weren't able to work on them again until Friday. Luckily, my students understood that I really wanted them to finish their maps yesterday (I only said it like 10 times). They had to color the buildings on their maps and on their map keys (similarly), add details like lines on the roads and trees and grass. Once students had finished their maps, we did some writing about our towns together. Students had to name their towns and identify which direction certain buildings were from each other on their maps. Finally, they glued their map keys onto their writing and drew a compass rose on their maps (with all 8 directions). Here are some of their maps:

Here is an up close shot of the writing:

Click here for a FREE copy of the writing page

On Wednesday my intern, Rachel, did a pumpkin glyph activity with the kids. They turned out SUPER CUTE!! Check out our pumpkin patch:

Here are the directions:

I adapted this from Glyphs! Grades 1-3: Data Communication for Mathematics by Susan R. O’Connell

On Thursday we went to Green Meadows Farm! This has been a first grade tradition longer than I have been at my school, so I wasn’t about to let this tradition die when my teaching partner retired. All three first grade classes went, and it seemed like all of the firsties (and grown-ups) had a BLAST! We were able to see a variety of farm animals: cows, sheep, goats, a steer, llamas, emus, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, pigs, bunnies, a horse, a mule, donkeys, and lots of baby animals. The students were able to milk a cow, feed the sheep and goats, hold a chicken, and pet almost ALL of the animals (even the steer). We also went on a hayride, saw a piggy race, and picked a pumpkin! Here are some pictures: