Happy Holidays!

We made it! We made it to day 80 of school and Winter break. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Years! School will resume January 4, 2017. The whole first grade sent home a reading contest for the kids to participate in if they would like to have a hot cocoa party when returning back to school. The students have to return the packet on Wednesday, January 4^th to earn the hot cocoa.

The kids have finally earned 10 art bucks from Mrs. Worsham. I tried trading the art bucks in Monday but Mrs. Worsham was not there. I wonder what kind of party they will earn?

 We had science buddies last week with our 5^th grade buddies. The first graders looooove their science buddies. This time, the kids made snow, cut paper snowflakes and did a contest to see how long they could place their hand in cold blubber which was in freezing water.

The class made their science buddies some Christmas cards to say thank you and Merry Christmas.

We made reindeer bags and ornaments. Look at how cute these reindeers are.

 Santa Claus stopped by the first grade commons in the afternoon on Tuesday. Mrs. Skalaban’s children gave him a big ol’ hug and their Santa letters. Santa said he was going to read it on his way back home to the North Pole since there were so many letters to read.

Mrs. Neill taught us how to use the tablets our school had recently received. Since the kids know the rules of the tablets, we have been using them for math centers lately.

 We had a successful party on Monday. We had lots of fun stations. They kids did a great job transitioning from one station to another. We even had a book exchange towards the end of the party. Hopefully the kids will enjoy their new book during the break! Thank you to all the moms who came and helped us out during the party.

We had our Vietnamese spelling test on Tuesday. These were our words we worked on for a week and a half. They are the QU and PH blends. We will now start working on letter blends. Before, we practiced spelling basic words such as “play, toy, will, can, I, and, like, love, eat, drink…” to help us compose a sentence.

When we come back, we will practice the TR and CH blends.

See everyone in 2017!!!

Holidays Around the World

The class Christmas tree was set up and the students got to do a little “show and tell” with their special ornament they brought in from home. After sharing, they got to pick a spot and hang their ornament on our fabulous pink Christmas tree.

This week, first grade did a rotation on “Holidays Around the World.” Each teacher taught a winter holiday. The kids learned that not all countries celebrate the holidays the same way. Some countries taught were Czech Republic, Mexico, Vietnam, Greece, Germany, Israel and Sweden. Ask your child what they learned! The kids were really excited to be traveling every morning. They would come into class asking me where they were going to travel to that day. This whole week’s lesson will tie into our field trip to “Holiday Hereos” tomorrow. They even had their own passport stamped : )

These are some activities done during “Holidays Around the World.”

 Mrs. Cardosa did a guidance lesson on Wednesday about teamwork. The mission was to get the kids to work in a group to successfully make a tree that stands up without arguing. The only supplies they were allowed to have were 2 pieces of green paper, two pieces of tapes and 4 popsicle sticks. Most of the groups were able to get their trees to stand up. It really amazed me on some of their creations. I can tell some of these kids might grow up to be engineers! : )

We received our new class pet on Wednesday. He is a box turtle. If we’re quiet enough, we can hear him scratching his cage and trying to climb up. He will be with us for two weeks!

 If you haven’t signed up yet, please stop by the class to sign up for an item! We have lots of empty slots. We will be having our class party on Monday, December 19^th.

 Tomorrow, we will be going on our field trip to watch a play. Please have your child wear their class t-shirt!