First Grade Specialist Update
Claxton Elementary
Art Update- Mr. Cassara
Primary and Secondary color review: Fall colors and fall leaves. Painted scarecrow
portraits
Native American games: Decorated Staves. Cut paper, Matisse inspired holiday
Drama Update- Mrs. Rigsby
Are you following our Twitter? @RigsbyNC
Health & PE Update- Coach Swain
Music Update - Mr. Butler
Younger grades learn about and sing this American standard as we learned about Veteran's Day in lessons that integrate history and music. Dating to the American Revolution, Yankee Doodle has fun lyrics with references that help us learn about the birth of our nation.
"Yankee Doodle went to town a-riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni." Did you know that "macaroni" was originally an Italian word for "fancy?" Hence the fancy noodles that go so well with cheese got their name. The expression was also used for a person who dressed fancy; what we would call a "dandy" in English . Without decent uniforms, especially compared to the British "Red-Coats," the first American soldiers had to resort to a feather in a cap as a uniform of sorts. Really not fancy at all, but good enough for the Yankee Doodle dandy!
Media Center- Mrs. Brown
April is National Poetry Month and library time this month focuses on our love of words and the beauty of poetry! We started out the month by reading one of my favorite authors, Douglas Florian, who shares fascinating facts about the universe in his poetry collection called Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars. It was particularly fun to use this book with my first graders as they just finished up a research unit on the solar system in their classrooms and could apply many of the interesting facts they had learned with the concepts presented within the poetry. During our poetry exploration this month we’ll be listening for rhyme and cadence in poems, noticing how poets can use shape as they present the written word on the page to illustrate a concept, and recognizing how poetry even can be used to teach us factual information (like in the Douglas Florian book). We’ll also be reading amazing reverso poetry by Marilyn Singer - poems that read backwards AND forwards! Of special note this month is our school visit by British children’s author Jane Clarke who is visiting us on Tuesday April 12th to offer a poetry performance. If you would like to purchase Jane’s latest release for a discounted price, you can visit this link: Pre-order Book by Visiting Author . Books will also be on sale the day of the visit for $11.11 (this is the discounted price) and all students will be able to have their books signed by Jane herself! As always, be sure to follow our library activity on Twitter at #clxreads. Happy Poetry Month to you!