Our Valentine's Celebration

Today was our Valentine's Celebration. We started the morning with the prompt "Love is..." The children had such wonderful things to say about love. Most wrote about their family members. We have their responses posted in the classroom. Then, it was time for our Valentine Centers. Each child make a Love Bug cookie, practiced skip counting and creating equal piles with conversation heart candies, and delivered their valentines to their classmates' valentine boxes. Then, they had a few other Valentine centers to choose from. Some students created Love Bug bookmarks, other made sentences with conversation heart candies and illustrated them, some did measuring math activities with their heart candies, and others read valentine books.

Before we knew it, it was time for martial arts. In your child's BEAR book today, they brought home our Martial Arts booklet. Feel free to keep track of their "Acts of Kindness" at home, too. After lunch we headed to the library for a Valentine Story Time with Mrs. Kraal. After Art we delivered our valentines to our big buddies. Finally, it was time for valentines and cookies! We opened all of our valentines and thanked our friends. Some students were very creative with their valentines. Everyone had such good manners. Next we ate (and enjoyed) our Love Bug cookies! Yum!

Finally, we finished the day with the game "Steal My Heart." Students paired up and challenged their partner to see who could "steal" the most heart candies by using only chopsticks! It was SO quiet, you could hear a pin drop! It was such a great fine motor activity and the children had to concentrate to use their chopsticks. They loved it! When the bell rang the students headed out with their valentines, candies, and balloons. Love was in the air! Happy Valentine's Day to all of my little valentines! Enjoy your long weekend and I will see you all on Tuesday!

100th Day of School

We just celebrated our 100th day of school!
Hi, ho! Hi, ho! 100 days ago...
We came to school and we're so cool!
Hi ho! Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!

We started the day off with 100 exercises. Next, our big project was making our special 100 Day Hats. We counted by 10's on each strip, then we added in all of the missing numbers from 1-100. They turned out great! Then, we weighed and compared our baggies of 100 items. After that, we had the choice as to which special centers we wanted to do. I made sure there were centers that addresses each child's interests and strengths. Our 100 day centers included: Making glasses out of the number 100, stringing 100 fruit loops to create a necklace, writing around the room 100 words, flipping a coin 100 times and recording how many times it landed heads up and how many times it landed tails up, typing numbers 1-100 on the computer, and reading a 100 day poem and drawing pictures of how you will look when you are 100 years old, what you would wear if it was 100 degrees outside, and something that weighs 100 pounds or more.

As a class we wrote our names as many times as we could in 100 seconds. We predicted and then discussed who wrote them most and who wrote the fewest. We also predicted if we took 100 steps down the hall where we would end up. After we placed sticky notes where we thought we would end up, we walked the 100 steps together down the hall. We were surprised to find out where we ended up. Can you guess where 100 steps from our classroom would be?

With our buddies, we played various math games with dice focusing on the number 100. We had such a great day but we couldn't believe that 100 days of 1st grade is over! We only have 75 days left!

Tie Dye Day 2008

Wow, the students were so excited to take their turn to create their 1st grade tie dye shirt! Thank you so much to the wonderful parent volunteers who helped prepare, set up, helped the kids tie dye, clean up, and wash the shirts. After soaking and twisting the shirts, the students came and use giant pipettes to squeeze different colored dye onto their shirts. We can't wait to see what they will look like when they are done! We'll take some pictures next week and post them on our blog. We can't wait to wear our new shirts on field trips and during special events this year! Thanks again to all of my volunteers!

H-E-B Excellence in Education Awards

On Wednesday afternoon, the first grade classes were told to come straight to the cafeteria after special areas. We didn't know what it was for, and boy were we surprised! Mrs. McCullar began by telling us what a wonderful group of teachers we have in first grade--Mrs. Lugo, Mrs. McLendon, Mrs. Bailey and myself. Then she called in some special guests to present an award.. actually, two awards. The guests were from H-E-B. H-E-Buddy arrived, along with many employees carrying balloons, flowers, GIANT checks, and cake.

A few months ago, both Mrs. Bailey and I applied for H-E-B's Excellence in Teaching Awards. Mrs. Bailey is in the "Rising Star" category for teaching less than 10 years and I am in the "Leadership" category for teaching 10-20 years. Yesterday, we found out that we were both state finalists in our respective categories. We will each be competing against 4 other teachers from across the state May 2nd-4th.

Mrs. McCullar did a great job keeping everything a surprise from us. We were both honored and excited to be sharing this experience together. This is the first time that two teachers have won from the same school (not to mention on the same grade level)!

Reader's Celebration

On Friday we had our 1st Grade Annual Reader's Celebration! We invited our parents and buddies to show them how well we are doing reading. After reading to our guests and enjoying a breakfast snack, then Ms. Shapiro gave each child a certificate, a book mark, and a special book for their accomplishments! Keep up the good work! Next semester we will have an Author's Celebration where the children will show off their writing!

Guest Trumpet Player

We were very fortunate to have one of our students' parents request to come and play the trumpet for us. We invited all of the first grade classes and we learned about how to play the trumpet, when Jeff began to play, when and where he got his first trumpet, and we heard him play wonderful music! The children had very appropriate questions to ask and I was very proud of them for remembering the difference between a question and a comment. It was a great way to end the day! Thanks for playing for us, Jeff!