Have we been busy!!!

I am finding it really hard to find time (remember) to update this every week!!  There is so much happening right now in our classroom!  We have been celebrating birthdays, having fun Friday, taking tests, learning new apps.  I could go on and on!!!

Here are a few highlites from the past few weeks:

We finished our first unit of study in Reader's Workshop and were able to invite a guest reader into our classroom to read to us.  We also wrote a reading compact that we all signed.

Mrs. Huttenga was our guest reader.  She read 'Enemy Pie' to us.  This is one of my favorite books.  Just ask the kids, I have LOTS of favorites!!  Too many good books out there.

This is our Reading Compact that we all signed.  This is hanging under the willow tree so that we can see it everyday.

We enjoyed celebrating Eli and Max's birthdays as well!

                    


For our fun Friday, we did some painting with leaves and sponges.  I think our paintings turned out pretty good.  Oh, did I mention that in the middle of our painting the fire alarm went off?!  Yes, this was pretty exciting.  Mrs. VandePol also donated some Halloween foam crafts.  We hung these on the lockers!!  Thanks Mrs. VandePol!

 

 

 

 

Here are the foam Halloween choices that we got to create for our lockers:

We have some exciting news that we got today too!  We are pen pals with a first grade class in Clare!!!  We received our first email message today and got to see the students and meet the teachers.  We will be sending an email back this week and we have started creating Halloween cards for them!  We can't wait to  be in contact with our friends this year.  Hopefully we can do some skyping with them as well!!

Field Trip To Hoxie's Farm Market

We had a great time at Hoxie's Farm Market.  The apples, donuts, and cider were delicious!!!  We learned a lot about pollination from the bees and that you can get 10 pumpkins from 1 seed!!  Crazy!!  We also learned that this farm has been in the family for 5 generations!  That's another amazing thing!!
Here are some highlights from our trip!!

 
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 

I love taking pictures and I saw at the field trip that many of you did as well.  However, we need to keep in mind that not everyone puts (or wants) pictures of their kids on Facebook.  We need to be mindful of this when we are taking pictures at school functions.  Please think about who may be in the pictures that you want to share.  It's probably best to only post pictures of your own child.  Thanks for keeping this in mind!!

Catching Up

Wow!  I am so sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while.  I have tried a few times without any luck.  Sometimes I can get it to work and sometimes I can't.  So, here's to another try!

We have been doing a lot of fun activities these past few weeks.  We opened our library with a ribbon cutting ceremony followed by cookies and juice.  We enjoyed our time exploring the library as well.

We created our classroom promise and signed it and created our faces to go with it.  We promise to do this daily.

We have celebrated 2 birthdays as well.

This past Friday we had our 1st Fun Friday.  We had different activities in each of the 1st grade classrooms and the kiddos got to choose what they wanted to do.  I had the playdough room and we jammed to Kidz Bop while we created things with playdough.  Here are a few pictures of that day:

Don't forget that we have a field trip on Thursday!!  Be sure to send a sack lunch with your child as well as dress them in layers.  The weather can be unpredictable.

What a GREAT first week!!

We had a really great first week full of lots of fun!  The first day of school, I took everyone's picture with this frame that I made.  Here's a peek at what it looked like...

We also read a book called 'First Day Jitters'.  It had a surprise ending.  Ask your child what that ending was!!  We enjoyed some jitter juice and made a trail mix for a successful school year.  Here are a few pictures of that:

We started sharing our favorite books!  WOW!!  Do we LOVE some great books!  Here is a glimpse at some of what we like to read:

We worked hard at creating our classroom promise as well.  We read 3 books, 'Officer Buckle and Gloria', 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?', and 'The Little Engine That Could', and came up with lots of good ideas.  Here's what our promise says:  When we care about each other and our classroom, we always tell the truth, we share what we have, we are bucket-fillers all the time.  We listen carefully, try our best and have fun together.  We treat others the way we want to be treated.  We understand that everyone makes mistakes.  We help each other learn and when someone asks us to stop, we stop.  This is who we are, even when no one is watching. 

We all promised to do this by writing our names and creating our faces.

We ended our week by celebrating Dominick's 7th birthday.  Wow, if this is a sign of how much fun we are going to have this year, we better get lots of rest.

So excited to meet you!!

I was so excited to get to meet my class last night.  I am really looking forward to the first day of school on Tuesday, September 3!  Please remember to send your classroom supplies with your child on this day.  We will be needing all of them on the first day!  Can't wait for Tuesday!  Have a fantastic last weekend of summer!