First Grade
Monarch Butterflies
Our First Grade students (95-100) have been participating in an Environmental Literacy Unit for the past 3 years. In this unit, students focus on Monarch Butterflies. We observe and track their life cycle, eating habits, habitat, and migration patterns. Students actively participate in many hands on lessons to measure and track the caterpillar’s growth, tour the school grounds for possibilities to expand their milkweed gardens and also tag and release butterflies.
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Energy Saving Tips
After observing vacant classrooms that still had the lights on, 24 first grade students created visuals to remind the Bodkin school community to save energy by turning lights out. The students distributed the visuals throughout the school to be posted next to light switches and remind everyone to conserve.
Recycled Goods CreationsStudents (95-100) create an alternative home for a fairy tale character using all recycled materials. Students start by designing the perfect home on paper. They need to sketch and label their house design. Students worked in groups of 2-3 to use recyclable materials to build their alternative house. Students wrote about how their house would protect their character.
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Community Helpers
As part of our community helpers unit, students write letters and deliver them to our local recycling men to thank them for doing their job. To make this important job easier for our students to understand, they read a book that tracks the life of a water bottle from the grocery store, to the recycling center, to finally being melted into something new. In addition to this, a guest speaker from Anne Arundel County’s Recycling Center came in to be a guest speaker for our 95-100 students. All students participated in the presentation about why it’s important to recycle. Students learned about what can be recycled and how to recycle. They also learned the importance of reusing items that can’t be recycled. As a culminating activity first graders played a game, ‘is it recyclable, trash, or reusable?’
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Monarch Butterfly Recycled Critter Craft
Using recycled items, students (95-100) created a Monarch Butterfly or Caterpillar critter. They presented the steps to create their critter in writing. Their masterpieces were placed on display and students went on a grade group gallery walk observing classmates creations.