FEBRUARY

What a crazzzzzy week it’s been and this month is just going to get crazier. February is the busiest month of the school year. From Fun Run, Valentine’s, conferences, Presidents’ Day, Lunar New Year, Science Expo and etc....

 On Tuesday, we had to evacuate the school building for 1.5 hours outside from smoke in the building. The alarm went off while we were in line for lunch. The kids did a REALLY good job staying calm and getting out of the building quickly. Mind I say, we evacuated the building in the DARK because at the same time this was happening, there was also a power outage in the building.

Because we were outside for so long, our schedule got a little funky. We missed specials, had to eat in the classroom and our dental presentation was rescheduled for a later time in the afternoon. February is Dental Hygiene Month so our friends at Sunny Hills came and talked to us about good dental health.

In math, we have been working on finding missing numbers. First graders are required to know up to 120 but some of the kiddos are taking my challenge and doing numbers up to 1,000!

I’ve been on the fence about incorporating flexible seating in the classroom for quite some time now. During the winter break, I did a lot of cleaning and brought some stuff up to the classroom that the students could use. Each day we have been taking rotations so everyone has a chance to use the pillows or the lap desks.

SO FAR, SO GOOD! We went over rules and how it looks like when we decide to work not at our desk. The kids know that if they do not use it correctly, they are not allowed to use them.

We worked on our January Vietnamese writing. “In the winter, I wear…”

 Towards the end of the week, we focused on Groundhog Day. We predicted if the groundhog will see his shadow. Looks like we will have 6 more weeks of winter!

We had our NG and NGH test on Friday. These blends were hard. Next week will be a little easier with TH and NH.

 The new counselor is trying to do an incentive for the kids to be on school on time every day. Each class had to meet the challenge of spelling out ATTENDANCE to earn a party. I think our class was the first class to do this on campus! The kids voted on a tablet party that we will do tomorrow morning.

Comparing Numbers

We had the CUTEST class pet this time. I believe our hedgehog was nocturnal so the kids did see much of him. I snapped these pictures as I was changing his bedding Monday morning.

We have been wrapping up our unit of comparing numbers this week. Here are pictures of the kids working and their work. I am slowly trying out flexible seating. The first seating I introduced were these pillows in the picture. Each day, I give 2 new friends the opportunity to use them for the day to work. So far, the kids are doing really well as to following the rules on how these pillows are to be used in class.

If there's anything at home you're wanting to get rid of that you think will help with our flexible seating in class, I would love to collect it!

Snow Week!

We continued our unit on comparing numbers this week. We learned that the alligator likes to eat the big juicy numbers. This helps us know the symbol for greater than and less than. 

Even though the kids are not expected to compare numbers above 120, I like the challenge the kids and most of them were able to compare numbers up to 500!

 This week in Mrs. Sklaban’s class, the kids got to bring a stuffed teddy bear for a writing assignment. They read some bear books and compared their bear with another friend’s bear.

Happy 2018!

I apologize for being MIA for awhile. I have misplaced my camera and life has been pretty busy lately. I do want to thank everyone for all my wonderful gifts for my birthday and Christmas. I was definitely spoiled! Here is a little catch up of what we’ve been doing.

In math, we worked on place value, drawing them and expanded form. Here are our cute little penguins we did while working on expanded form. These are hung outside of our classroom.

We did a lot of learning about how influential MLK Jr. was to our country and how he changed history. MLK is one of my favorite topics to teach in Social Studies. The kids loooove learning about him and how the world used to be so segregated compared to how it is today. It's something to be grateful for. We watched lots of videos and read lots of books. We even saw a real clip of his "I have a dream" speech!

In health, we learned about bones. We will do a writing about bones next week in class.

In computer lab, we have been behaving so Mrs. Neill let us have a party because we earned our 10 stickers. We got to explore legos, do Tux Paint and even get introduced to Dash and Dot!

We have been practicing our Tet dance for February 23. Our costumes have not came in yet so we're still waiting. The children are doing great learning the dance moves. It only took them about 3 days to learn it all.

Welcome December!

Sorry I haven’t posted lately. I was going to update the blog during Thanksgiving break but realized I forgot my camera at school so this will be a longer post for the last 3 weeks.

 It’s been awhile since we’ve had a class pet. We received Hissing Cockroaches on Wednesday. I’m just praying that they don’t figure out how to make their way out of the tank. One time, we had a corn snake escape its tank and later found on campus! 

 We finished our first Marathon Kids Log. These laps are ran during WOW time at the end of the day. This time around, I decided to do it individually so it’s more fair. It is a little bit more work but I didn’t feel like it was fair for the kids who are running almost a mile everyday compared to the kids who are not. I have placed them in their daily folders and will be marking their logs every day at dismissal. Everyone should have received their shirts during PE on Thursday.

We finally wrapped up our money unit this week. The kids are doing great counting mixed coins. This upcoming week, we will be starting on adding/subtracting 10.

Before Thanksgiving break, we learned about the first Thanksgiving.

 We made turkeys and wrote about things we are thankful for.

 We wrote about “If I had a turkey, I would…”

 Mrs. Sheri came and taught us a strategy called “statues.” This is when I call out a Vietnamese sight word and the kids think of a position they can do to represent the vocabulary of that word. The kids have to remember that when they pose, they cannot talk and they have to stay still. This activity also works on body control, which all first graders need ;) 

Our schedule was all out of wack this week. I barely had any teaching time with the students this week. We did a “Holidays Around the World” with the whole first grade so each day the kids would go on a rotation around and have a different first grade teacher teach them about a country. The kids really enjoyed this. Not only did we do this rotation that took up most of our mornings, but we had guidance, library, computer lab, CLI, and Spanish lessons two times this week. 

The students earned their 5 stars in the cafeteria to earn a party. They chose a movie/popcorn party on Friday so as they were working on decorating their Christmas tree, we were enjoying our party at the same time. 

Firefighters, Veterans, Counting Money!

We started learning how to identify coins and counting pennies, nickels and dimes this week. Most of the kids are getting the hang of it real fast. We will continue next week with identifying quarters and adding up coins. Ask your child about the "hair" trick we have been practicing in class to help add up money.

In VLA, we are working on words beginning in QU and PH. We will have a test this Friday over the words.

 For every set of Vietnamese words, we make flashcards which we use during journal writing time. These get laminated, cut, whole punched and put on hook rings.

We were lucky enough to have firefighters AND Veterans come present this week. Our Army soldiers are parents to a student in Mrs. Garcia’s class. They came and talked to us about what they do. They even brought us some pencils and prizes.

 THANK YOU VETERANS FOR YOUR SERVICES!

We talked about Veterans Day all week long. Ask your child what they have learned about the different armed forces, Veterans Day parades and characteristics of someone serving for our country.

I had scheduled some firefighters come talk to the kids since fire safety month was in October. Originally, we were going to do the presentation outside so the kids could get a tour of the truck but it was so cold that day that we ended up doing it inside the building in our commons. Not only did students learn a lot, but teachers did too! I learned some things that I had never known before. The kids really enjoyed having real firefighters teaching them about what they do every day and how to be safe in incidents of a fire.

Halloween Week!

This week felt like the longest week! We had lots of fun activities this week and we managed to squeeze some learning in there too. We stopped by the library on Monday and voted for our favorite pumpkin from the pumpkin contest. The winner was a Pokemon pumpkin.

 We had our Halloween party on Tuesday at the end of the day. About 2/3 of our class dressed up in their fun costumes. I meant to take a picture of the kids but I forgot. Thank you to all my mom volunteers who came out to help!!! Without you, our party wouldn’t have been so smooth. Also, I would like to thank everyone who volunteered to bring an item to contribute to our party.

We did a writing activity on what I should dress up for Halloween. Some answers I got were a cupcake, a kitty, a lollipop, a dog, and a princess.

We’ve been skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s for the past two weeks. Next upcoming week, we will start identifying coins and counting coins. Please make sure that you continue to work on skip counting by 5’s and 10’s at home. This will help your child count money for our next unit.

Our awesome science buddies stopped by to visit us and gave us a candy kit experiment bag. Since this month’s schedule is totally crazy, we will not have time to meet up with our science buddies at school so they made us a science kit to take home to experiment. The kids also wanted to make their buddies cards to give to them, which was very thoughtful and sweet!