Leverett School Grade 1 Joyful Learning For Young Children 

It’s been such a wonderful end to our year in first grade together!  Our field trip to Northfield Mountain, our Author’s Breakfast and the heroic rescue of our class pet on Wednesday.  It was a very exciting day in the classroom.  So exciting, the class sat down and wrote a story together about it.  I had to share it with you so you could hear the full story.  There was a lot of cheering in first grade.  Hope you enjoy reading it and hope you have a fabulous summer with your soon-to-be second grader!

 

Bob’s Rescue

(written by First Grade with a little help from their teachers)

Once upon a time there was a first grade studying ponds.  Their teachers, Deb and Alissa, said, “Let’s get some tadpoles to have as pets.”  So Deb went to Leverett Pond to collect a blob of frog eggs and brought them into the classroom.  Soon after, one of the eggs hatched into a tadpole!  All the other eggs didn’t hatch for some reason, and the children became very attached to the surviving tadpole in their tank.  Every day the kids put in new water collected from the vernal pool on the playground.  Every day they fed their tadpole frozen lettuce.  The tadpole ate and ate and grew and grew.  The children loved to watch the tadpole and would gather around the tank first thing every morning.  One day they started calling him Bob.  He got fatter and fatter.  Suddenly, someone noticed he had back legs!  He was growing!  The kids were so excited.  Soon, he had his front legs.  He started to breathe oxygen with his new lungs.  One morning, the children came in to see he had lost his tail.  Overnight he had become a froglet! The children admired their new friend.  Soon the whole school new about Bob the froglet.  Children and teachers would come down to the first grade with curious eyes and say, “Can we see Bob?”  The class was amazed and joyful.  Bob, their froglet, was famous at Leverett Elementary School.  Deb kept saying, “He is a frog now.  He can hop.  We should return him to Leverett Pond.”  Alissa kept saying, “Oh, can we keep him for just one more day?  He’s so cute.  The children would miss him.”  

 

Then one day……

 

Deb and Alissa arrived at the classroom early one morning.  They leaned over the tank to say good morning to Bob and discovered BOB WAS GONE!  They searched everywhere for him.  They looked under the rug.  They looked around the tank.  No Bob.  The principal, Ms. Lacey, was the first to respond to their call for help in the search for Bob.  She reached into the tank with her bare hands and removed the rock he liked to hide behind.  No Bob.  She reached in again and ran her fingers through the leaves and muck at the bottom of the tank.  No Bob.  He could not be found.  Deb and Alissa looked at each other and cried, “Where is Bob?  What will we tell the children?”  Soon after, the children arrived and a new day began in first grade.  Deb and Alissa shared the sad discovery with the children.  Everyone looked worried and sad.  So the children gathered in a circle, passed a magic wand around and everyone shared a hope or wish for Bob, their missing friend.  To cheer everyone up, Alissa said, “Let’s go for a hike in the woods behind school.  It will be fun.”  And the children lined up and headed outside for an early summer hike together.

 

An hour later, as the class was returning to first grade, two fifth graders, Levi and Maddie, came running down the hallway yelling, “WE FOUND BOB!  He was on the blacktop at recess.  We found him and brought him back to your tank.”  The children cheered and rushed back to their classroom to look for Bob.  Everyone peered over the edge of the tank and within seconds Bob swam by!  IT WAS TRUE!!  The teachers invited the 5th grade heroes to come in and tell the children all about their heroic rescue.  The first graders asked questions and offered comments of gratitude to the rescuers.  They were so thankful to have their friend safe and sound back in the tank.  

 

Then Deb carefully transferred Bob into a container WITH A TOP, and put him into her car so she could give him a ride back to Leverett Pond.  So that is the story of first grade’s amazing water animal, BOB, who is now back at home in Leverett Pond.

 

Or is he…….??!!??  😎

 

 

 

 

  This Friday!  Please come to our Author’s Breakfast.  Come meet the authors!!  All these fabulous authors will be presenting their work.

And….you will even get to meet this guy, Bob, our class tadpole.  Have you heard about him?  He’s growing bigger by the day.

 

Hope you see you Friday!

 

Have you heard about our class pet?  Here is Bob, our tadpole.  Deb brought in a whole blob of frog eggs a few weeks ago, but only one has survived.  We’ve watched him grow and now we can see his back legs forming!  If you look really closely, you might see them!

 

We’ve been working on some pond books to follow up on the things we learned on our field trip.  The bulletin board outside our classroom is full of animals we made who live in different levels of the pond habitat.

Authors Breakfast is coming soon and the end of the year is quickly approaching.  It’s hard to believe.  When I look back at the year, I’m amazed at the great work the children have accomplished.  It’s time to celebrate!  The children will soon be making invitations to invite you to our Author’s Breakfast on Friday, June 16, from 8:45-10:00.  Each child will pick one story he/she has written this year to read to the group and then we will have a breakfast celebration afterwards.  We hope you can join us for all or part of this special First Grade writing celebration!