Happy Winter Vacation!

We've worked hard this week learning about fact families, letter writing, and Presidents Washington and Lincoln...........my firsties have become very knowledgeable about the presidents!

Wishing you all a fun and enjoyable week off with your child!

Valentine's Day Excitement!!!

We had a fun filled Valentine's Day! The student came in with loads of energy, and left with even more......and we didn't even have any sugar! We passed out our Valentine's this morning, then graphed them according to topic [animal, superhero, cartoon,etc.] We discussed our data, and my smarties came up with some excellent findings! This afternoon we decorated our 'Kindness Hearts', then passed out our comments to each other. Everyone was so excited to read all the kind thoughts! Lastly I passed out all the goodie bag items [again, thank you all SO much !] We had a "love"-ly day!! The pictures below show our classroom amongst all the decorating........it was a sea of red and pink in here!

Happy Valentine's Day !!  :-)

!00 Day - Part 2 !!

Here are a few pictures of our 100 Day Bulletin Board.........pictures of how the students think they will look when they're 100 years old. They were SO adorable!!

100 Day Fun!!

We had a FABULOUS 100 day!! We were greeted at our door announcing that we were now "100 Day Smarter!" We made 100 day necklaces, and 100 day headbands, along with MANY other 100 day activities! When asked what they liked best about 100 day, the answer was a unanimous 'EVERYTHING"!!!

Working hard this week!

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Happy February.....GO PATS!!

I will make this a quick post since it is Superbowl Sunday! Can you believe that it is already February??

We had a lot of fun this week watching a LIVE streaming video of a Black Bear in her den [up in No.Maine]with 2 little cubs! Needless to say, we will be doing some quick research about black bears.....very fascinating to hear them grunting and squeeling. The babies are SO cute! It's become quite the activity in our classroom during free time!

I hope you have been able to practice with the flash cards that were sent home this past week. Soon a Math log will be sent home as well, with more direction on how and what to work on. So far we have been working with adding and subtracting 1's and 2's. We are also working on Math stories - which are fun to watch the students figure out - I love to see the different thought patterns!

Friday is our 100th day of school! We will be doing all sorts of activities with the number 100. I am looking forward to figuring out what is in all those 100 Day Bottles! Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures too!

I'll post more soon........off to watch the game!

What we were up to last week!

This past week we were busy taking our DIBELS, and  NWEA testing! Quite a lot for first graders to do all in one week, but we did it!! I think the students loved the NWEA test because it was all on the computer....a nice change of pace. We also had our first 'mini' spelling test, and I'm proud to say that almost everyone got 100% !! They students were so cute all week, coming in to me and proudly stating that they knew how to spell 'because' !! Exactly my reason for having the test!! [I will post next weeks list tomorrow as I left the word list at school - oops!]


We were also busy last week learning about penguins. Do you know how long the father Emperor Penguin goes without food while holding his babies' egg on his feet? Do you know how tall an Emperor Penguin is? Ask your child because they do!! We also completed an adorable penguin art project and  will continue our study this week!


In math we continue to become experts on reading and writing numbers by their place value. We've been playing games, and doing math puzzles. In reading we continue to learn new vocabulary words, work on our fluency, and to practice all of our long vowel sounds. In writing we have begun focusing on using adjectives [describing words] to make our sentences "Super" !


Our new classroom focus has become "Fancy Nancy Words"!! Fancy Nancy is a character in a series of children's books that we have been reading. Fancy Nancy likes to use "fancy " words when she talks. We have been having lots of fun learning other ways to say 'regular' words. We have started a bulletin board with all of our "Fancy" words  on it. What a fun way to enhance our writing!! Our favorite words so far have been 'crestfallen' for disappointed [Izzy's favorite!], 'posh' for fancy, and 'aroma' for smell [Sean's favorite!]. We've been having fun making our vocabulary more 'posh'!!


As we roll into February we have a lot to look forward to..................Groundhog Day, 100 Day, Valentine's Day, and President's Day. And yes, we will be learning about them all! Information on Valentine's Day and 100 Day will soon be sent home, so be on the look out for it! 


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