December Already!!!

Well, I can honestly say that I have had turkey everyday since Thanksgiving day!!  I feel like it's the never ending bag of turkey!!  I made a delicious soup with it today so I got to have a different twist on things!  It was yummy too!

I hope that we all had a great Thanksgiving.  We have 3 full weeks (unless mother nature would like to plan a snow day for us) until Christmas!!  Love December and all the craziness that keeps us busy!  We will be busy too!  We have gifts to make and an elf to keep an eye on!!  Or maybe it's the other way around.....We will also be making gingerbread houses.  I will need a few volunteers for this, as it can get a little crazy!  I love how they turn out though!   I will be sending home information about this as well as the Christmas party this week.

We had a great feast on Wednesday!  We ate our corn bread muffins that we made on Tuesday and we had popcorn and a birthday treat as well.  It was a feast (more like Charlie Brown's, but we didn't care!!)

We got to enjoy celebrating with Lauren as well.  She turned 7 years old on Sunday, but we celebrated early with a turkey treat!  It was delicious and adorable!!  Happy Birthday Lauren!!

It's Thanksgiving Week!

I am so glad that last week is finally over!  I dislike being gone even one day and last week was 3 total days!  My daughter, Brecken, came down with pneumonia.  She is much better and we are both happy to be returning to school tomorrow!!

While I was gone, we did get to learn a few things about the native americans who helped the pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock.  We made a native american to go along with our learning.  Here's a peek at a few:

We also celebrated JD's birthday.  He is 7 years old now!!

All week we celebrated Lauren as well.  She was our student of the week!

I certainly hope that you all have a blessed Thanksgiving day and can find something to be thankful for this week!  Thanks so much for sharing your child with me.  I grow to love them more and more each day!  Happy Thanksgiving!!

Let's Catch Up!!

I am excited to be blogging about my class this year!  If I had a choice, I would blog and not type those dreadful newsletters!!  I LOVE to take pictures (just ask either of my girls!  They have been photographed to death!)  When I tried putting pictures in my newsletters, they came out looking like blobs.  You couldn't see who the kids even were!  BUMMER!  So, I decided that I would put the pictures on my blog instead!  So much better and they are in color!!!  I hope that your child does have a lot of fun in my classroom.  I LOVE to have fun and learn at the same time!  First graders are the best because I think they like to do that as well.  It has been a while since my first post, so let's catch up!

Here are the highlights from October:

We visited Geers Farm on a very rainy day!  I tried to take as many pictures as I could, but with the rain, it made it difficult!!


We also celebrated a couple of birthdays.  When we celebrate birthdays in first grade, we make it special.  The birthday person gets to wear a birthday had and pin for the day.  We make them a birthday hug book.  They receive a gift from me and we sing them a special birthday song.  Summer and Allison were are birthday starts from October.

We also got to celebrate Halloween!!  What an exciting day that turned out to be!  Not only did we get to bring costumes, dress up, parade through the whole school, and go through the 4th grade wax museum, but we also got to witness the very first snow fall of the year!!!!!  Now if that doesn't make for a crazy day, I don't know what does!!  Here are some pictures of us dressed in our finest!!

The princesses

Super heroes (sort of)

Those who serve and protect

Witches and a few princesses and a pirate

Mario and Christoph

The whole gang

Another exciting thing that we got to do in October is learn about Reader's Theater.  This is like a play only you don't have to memorize the parts, you can read from the paper.  The class loved doing these!!  I can't wait to do them again in a few more weeks.  Here is just one group performing their Reader's Theater:

So far in November, we have been learning about Veterans and why we celebrate Veterans day.  We also have been learning about Thanksgiving and how that all got started.  For Veteran's day, we made a book and brought it home.  We also made some Veterans and hung them up in the hallway.  

We celebrated Canden's birthday this past week.

This week will be filled with more about Thanksgiving.  We will be making some Native Americans and creating our own Native American names.  We will hang these in the hallway.

Lauren is our student of the week this week!  

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Welcome to First Grade!

We have been very busy these first 3 weeks!!  We have been learning routines and rules among many other things.  Here are a few things that we do in first grade that your child may have told you about:

Go Noodle:  this is a website that we use to do our brain breaks.  Around 10 every morning we do a brain break.  These are dances that are put together from koo koo kangaroo, zumba, and you tube videos.  Most of them are popular songs and are from the Wii Just Dance for Kids.  We have a lot of fun doing these.

DoJo points:  We earn DoJo points in our classroom.  This is an online behavior management system. Each student has an avatar and has an opportunity to earn points for many things.  Students can also lose points for different things.  About every 2 weeks, students can spend their DoJo points on reward coupons.  These are things like show and tell, bring in your favorite music, bring a stuffed animal, switch spots with someone, etc.  You can set up a password to go on and see what your child is earning points for and they can change their avatar.  There is a sheet coming home Monday to tell you how to get to it.

Library:  We went to library this past week.  I did let students decide if they wanted to take their books home or not.  If your child brought home a book, please be sure to send it back before our next library day which is September 30.  Eventually students will be able to check out 2 books, one to bring home that can be any reading level and one that is their reading level that they can put in their book boxes.

Guest Reader:  We had a guest reader this week.  She earned a coupon to read to another class and she chose us.  Her name is Idaline Helsel.  She is a third grader.  She read a us a super great book and did a fantastic job!  We hope she comes back soon!!

Coins for Kids:  We are collecting coins for kids again this year.  We are raising money to fight world hunger.  If you have any spare change at home that you can bring in, we would greatly appreciate it.  The class with the most money earns a pizza party from Pizza Hut!!  Let's bring in what we can to help feed hungry children around the world!!

Sorry it's been so long!

It has been a while since I have updated my blog and I want to apologize.  I didn't think anyone was reading it, so I stopped updating it because it takes a while to do.

So, here is an update from February.  We welcomed our student teacher Sarah Sluiter.  She is fitting in well.  We also jumped our hearts out for jump rope for heart.  We raised $11,000!!  Thanks for supporting this cause.

We also celebrated Valentine's Day on the same day!  It was busy for sure.  Here's a look at some of our Valentine boxes!  They turned out great!!

Last week we celebrated 100s day.  I found an app for my ipad called Old Fart Photo Booth.  You can take any picture and add years to it.  So, I gave all the kids a glimpse at what they would look like 100 years from now.  It was entertaining for sure!!!

We also made some capes to wear with 100 things.  I will have to post those later.  My ipad needs charging and the pictures need to be uploaded.....technology....ugh!

Next month starts reading month (actually next week).  We are doing a Dr. Suess theme this year!!  Be looking for notes and special celebrations to be coming home throughout the month!