Ocean: Our Important poems and Quilt

A Patchwork of Places and Poetry

Marci McGowan's First Grade
H. W. Mountz Elementary School
Spring Lake, NJ

The Ocean

Our class selected the ocean as our special place this year. The ocean is a great topic for young children and especially for us. Our school is just a few blocks away from the Atlantic. This is a picture of our boardwalk.

We wrote one poem with the whole class showing important things we learned about the ocean. Our poem uses Margaret Wise Brown's pattern from her Important Book. Then our class made individual illustrations of an ocean animal or use. Finally, we wrote an acrostic poem about the ocean (this whole class experience prepared the students to write acrostic poems about themselves for another project).

The Ocean

The important thing about the ocean is that it is home to many living things.

* There are plants and animals in the ocean.
* There are mountains and volcanoes under the ocean.
* There is more ocean than land.
* The ocean has four names: the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Arctic Ocean. The Pacific is the largest.
* The ocean is part of the water cycle.
      Water evaporates and makes clouds.
      Rain and snow fall from the clouds.
      Water runs into rivers that flow to the ocean.
* People use the ocean for travel and to move things.
* People dump garbage there. We need to keep the ocean   clean.
* We eat fish and shellfish from the ocean.
* People use the ocean for swimming, fishing, boating,         tubing, surfing, and riding the waves.

But the most important thing is that the ocean is the home of living things.

THE OCEAN

T ake care of the ocean.
H ave fun playing in the ocean.
E asy for us to get there!

O utstanding waves
C overs volcanoes, shells, and sand
E normous!
A nimals and plants live there
N ever dump garbage in the ocean.

Along with this, we read several quilt books and saw several real quilts too. Some favorite quilt books were:

Reuben and the Quilt by P. Buckley Moss
Sam Johnson and the Blue Ribbon Quilt by Lisa Campbell Ernst
Selina and the Bear Paw Quilt by Barbara Smucker
Quilting Now & Then by Karen B. Willing

Here's our (slightly lopsided) quilt.

marcy_image2.jpg (44181 bytes)

You can see some of the quilt blocks by clicking
on the thumbnail images below:

Steven's
Great White Shark

Connor's
Angelfish

Joanna's
Sea Star

Sarah's
Penguin

Quilt Blocks

This is the block we used in our quilt.
You can print out full size 7" block also.

Patchwork of Places and Poetry Homepage

Mrs. McGowan's First Grade