Blizzard Day

Today, the school looks like a blizzard came through. All of the kids are dressed in white. We have been having a Christmas Raffle throughout the day and watched Frosty the Snowman to go with the snow theme. Thankfully, no one got lunch on their clothes. Everyone stayed clean.

Christmas Shirt and Candy Cane Day

Yesterday, we celebrated the second day of Christmas Week. We all wore our best Christmas shirts with different Christmas headgear. We also focused on peppermints and candy canes. We made peppermint ornaments, read The Legend of the Candy Cane and watched the movie to go with it. The candy cane has so many hidden meanings that the kids did not know. It was like light bulbs going off when the symbols were pointed out to them.

The ornaments before they were baked.

The ornaments after they were baked and melted. They turned out great.

Nativity Day!

Today was the first day of Christmas Week and we started with a bang! We celebrated Nativity Day where the kids dressed up as different nativity characters. We had just about everything: Mary, sheep, shepherds, angels, stars. We also focused on nativity stories and activities throughout the day as well.

Surprise!

On Friday, we played a special game of Hangman at the end of the day. The kids were a little surprised that we were playing with a full sentence instead of just one word; however, they were even more surprised to see what the sentence was after all of the letters were guessed:

That is correct. My husband and I are expecting our second child this June. We are very excited and cannot wait to become a family of four.

Happy Birthday Ella and Owen!

Today we celebrated Ella and Owen's birthday (just one day late). We read Ella's book first since she was born first. She brought in Oliver and Amanda: Amanda Pig, First Grader by Jean Van Leeuwen. It was a perfect book for Ella since she loves pigs. The kids loved relating to the different parts of the story since it was about first grade. They compared the first grade in the book with our first grade here. Next, we read Owen's book. He brought in The Itsy Bitsy Spider by Iza Trapani. The kids knew the first part from the nursery rhyme; however, throughout the book, the author changes the popular rhyme to different places. The kids loved trying to guess where the spider was going to go next. They are both great additions to our classroom library.

Happy Birthday William!

Last week, we celebrated William's birthday. He brought in the book Dolphin Tale 2: The Junior Novel. We started reading a little bit and the kids were loving it. Many of them have seen both movies and know the stories of the lovable dolphins Winter and Hope. We will read a little bit each day since it is a chapter book.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last Monday, we celebrated Thanksgiving in a big way in first grade. We spent much of the day preparing food for a Thanksgiving Feast. At the end of the day, we came together, the Pilgrims and the Native Americans to partake in our own Thanksgiving meal.

We mixed vegetables together to make Friendship Stew.

We mixed ingredients to make cornbread.

We ate!!

Happy Grandparent's Day!

Today we celebrated Grandparent's Day. We had many special visitors at our school. We had a special Mass to combine Grandparent's Day and Veteran's Day. Then, our visitors came back to the school to share some special time with. The kids had a great time showing them all about first grade.

PE Spelling Words

Today in PE, the students used their bodies to practice spelling their spelling words for the week. It looks like they had a great time!

Happy Halloween!

Last Friday, we celebrated Halloween. The students wore their costumes to school and participated in a reverse trick-or-treating where they gave out toiletry items to vote for their favorite teacher costumes. The school collected over 4,600 items to donate to St. Vincent De Paul and Beggars for the Poor. It was a great time had by all and everyone looked great!

STEM Day

On Thursday, we took the day to do a STEM activity. We worked on Science, Engineering, Technology, and Math. We tied all those together with one big project on habitats. We did many things throughout the day.

We spent our morning researching different habitats and making graphic organizers about them.

We wrote about the animals, plants, and weather in our habitats.

We went outside to gather materials to help make dioramas of our habitats.

We worked hard making our dioramas with our partners.

The ocean...

The arctic...

The desert...

The jungle...

The desert...

The ocean...

The jungle...

The forest...

The arctic...