Mrs. McGowan's First Grade Class

Mrs. McGowan's First Grade Class
H.W. Mountz School
Spring Lake, NJ

January came to New Jersey with several inches of beautiful snow! Our "winter wonderland" was the perfect setting for lots of winter story reading, writing, and making "frosty"things. We started by making paper snow people for our classroom door.
	The children really enjoyed our shared reading of Flowers for the Snowman by Gerda Marie Scheidl. In this story, a new snowman is very disappointed when he doesn't see lovely rainbow-colored flowers he has heard about. He sets off to find these flowers and meets several animals along the way. They try to discourage the snowman but he doesn't give up his search. Finally beautiful flowers are found in a greenhouse but ... well, you will have to read the book to find out what happens. Can you guess? This story, wonderfully illustrated by Jozef Wilkon, offered many opportunities for our students to make predictions and share their knowledge about snow and winter temperatures.
After enjoying this special story, we all made Marshmallow Snow People using big marshmallows and skinny pretzels sticks. Smaller pieces of pretzel hold the fluff together. Yummy too!
	A few days later, we read Flowers for the Snowman again. This time we were getting ready to illustrate or write different endings for the story. As you can see, we have the snowman going to very special places! One of our students drew the Snowman enjoying his beautiful flowers on a bright sunny day.

Finally we were ready to write in another poetry style. These two poems reflect what we have been learning about parts of speech: 4 - Line Poem With Winter Theme Line 1 :a color describing word Line 2 :a noun Line 3:a verb Line 4: Winter is .... describing word	Another literacy activity enjoyed by everyone was writing poems about winter. First some students suggested writing an acrostic poem, a comfortable format and one they've had experience using. We put our heads together, did a lot of compromising and wrote this class poem: Snowman Flowers S now falling N ew flakes O n every rooftop a W hite blanket M aking A winter dream and N ew flowers for the snowman!

All of our poems, story endings, and illustrations related to Flowers for the Snowman are displayed on a classroom bulletin board and can be seen on our webpage, Winter Poems . Student work was photographed with a digital camera or scanned for webpage use. Internet projects such as this one, provide our first graders with unique opportunities for communication with other students around the globe. The class activities published here are aligned with our state and technology standards : New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards Language and Literacy 3.2 listen actively in a variety of situations to information from a variety of sources. 3.3 write in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and form for different audiences and purposes. 3.4 read various materials and texts with comprehension and critical analysis. 3.5 view, understand, and use nontextual visual information. National Educational Technology Standards for Students. (NETS) Students use productivity tools to collaborate in constructing technology-enhanced models, preparing publications, and producing other creative works. 4. Technology communications tools Students use telecommunications to collaborate, publish, interact with peers, experts, and other audiences.