Hands-on Fun!

Friday was full of hands-on fun! All week we have been learning about "how-to" books.  We have talked about how to follow directions from books and also how to write a how-to piece to teach an audience. We followed the directions and planted bulbs to grow Paperwhites in our classroom. They are pretty little white flowers that bloom in the wintertime.  At the end of the day we opened up our craft book, mixed ingredients to make salt dough, and rolled out some salt dough tree ornaments. A little messy, but a lot of fun!

Family Night!

This year we welcomed the winter season with a fun-filled family night complete with games, a bonfire, hayrides, hot cocoa, and live reindeer. I was so happy that many of our classmates came out to enjoy this fun evening! Next family night is in February!

Gratitude Tree

Last month the students filled out special leaves to share what they were thankful for. It was a great lesson in gratitude. The kids didn't want to get rid of the tree after Thanksgiving and a couple of them had the idea to decorate it with snowflakes. After folding and cutting our own snowflakes, the kids wrote one of their favorite things. Each day, one student will share theirs and add it to our "Favorite Things Tree".

Service Learning Buddies

For the last few weeks we've been lucky enough to have three service learning students volunteer during our after school program to help out with reading. They teach the kids a lot and have become wonderful role models. Couldn't pass up the chance to take a picture of these two!

Morning journal entries are getting better and better! I love the innocence in this one- I'd vote for her any day!

Graphing with M&Ms

We had a lot of fun on Friday learning to sort, tally, and make bar graphs using M&Ms! Thanks to Mr. Algra and Ms. Paula for helping!

Character Ed/ Pumpkin Writing Assembly

What a great assembly to celebrate our wonderful kids! Today we awarded a student of the month, author of the month, and TWO of our classmates tied for FIRST place in the pumpkin writing contest. Way to go, first graders!

 Ms. Baxter and Mrs. Willinger getting the kids pumped up for the writing contest!

The adorable "trophies" awarded to the contest winners