Are You Ready?

 

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas!

 



Pajama Day!

Today the kids wore their finest....pajamas to school.  We went down to the cafeteria to cozy up on blankets and watch a Christmas movie with all our first grade friends.

 

Pretending to nap in the classroom before heading down to the big event.

 

Santa Paws

 

Cuddling up with our friends.

No words

The 50th Day!

Well I was able to load new photos only because I went into the Picasa Web album and deleted old ones.  I didn' t like doing that, but I didn't know what else to do for now.  If anyone knows how to solve this for me let me know!  I have no idea how to change the size of the photos in Picasa Web albums, nor have I had time to sit and figure it out. 

 

Enjoy the photos from the 50th day of school!

 Making root beer floats was so fun.

 

Of course we had to turn the floats into a learning experience so we wrote a "How To" piece.

 

 

YUM!

 

 

The "Greasers"

 

 

The " Pink Ladies"

 

 

 The first grade team!

Why does it always have to be so hard?

I have great photos to share of the 50th day of school, but when I started to post I got a nasty message saying my space for photos was filled on Picasa.  I didn't even know I was using Picasa for photos.  Long story short....I am working on a solution to the problem and hope to have pictures for you all soon. I have updated to Google + and that may be the key????  STAY TUNED! 

Plymouth Colony in First grade

 One of my favorite lessons to teach is the story of Plymouth Colony and  the Wampanoag Indians.  The kids LOVE it.  A few years back I tried making a mural of the setting which worked out so great.  So now I do it every year.  Each year it looks a bit different  which is my favorite part because it showcases the personalities of the class.  We hang it in the hallway and it is enjoyed by the other classes that walk by.  I love hearing past students telling me they remember the part they made.  Lessons like these are the ones that stick in their memories.

Here are some close ups of the mural.  The Wampanoag Village has the wigwams and a fire for cooking.

The Pilgrims homes are quite fancy this year.  Maybe I have some future Design Stars in this class.

Fishing to feed the village.

The main event, of course, is the feast.  Nice table made by Ethan!

 

Love this craftivity I got from A Cupcake For The Teacher. We wrote Indian facts on them.

 

And here is what we are thankful for......

 

 

 

I am thankful for this pilgrim craftivity from First Grade W.O.W .  It was a freebie so go to her blog and grab it for yourself.

 

Parent teacher conferences start this Friday.  Lots to share and learn about this year's firsties.  Can't wait!

 

 

Halloween Happenings

So here in Southern New Jersey we had to postpone our Halloween fun because of a nasty visitor named, Hurricane Sandy.   Our little town was not greatly affected thank goodness, but just over the bridge, our  beach towns  were.  We are planning to help out in any way we can to rebuild and aide those who are suffering after this storm. 
Since school was cancelled for three days, including October 31st, we had to postpone our parade and party.  We made up for it today though.  Check out our costumes!  Click on any picture if you want to make it bigger.

Our principal leads the parade.

"Peace Out!" said Mrs. Cialini.

The girls looked so cute! (3 were absent unfortunately)

The boys were rockin'!

Thanks for the fun craft Mrs. Costabile! We made lollipop spiders.

Yummy cupcakes from Mrs. Leonetti.

How about these Mario Bros.

Every party needs a pinata!  Thanks Loeb family.

 

Can he do it?

 

Everybody shared and used respect claiming the goods!

 

 



Read the Room Fun

We have been having lots of fun reading the room to practice the phonics skills we have learned.  Over the First Grade Rainbow has a fun R blends unit that has a really fun activity where the kids get to use a pretend camera to go around and "take pictures" of R blends.  Check out her unit on TPT.

I put the big pictures up all around the room and then there are little pictures cut up in the cup.  After the kids "took a picture" with their camera, they read the word and took a little picture to put in their camera.

The camera is a piece of copy paper folded and glued into a pocket to hold the little pictures.

 

Then they go back to their desk, empty out the camera and glue each little picture into the "photo album" and write the r blend under it.

 

 

Here is a view of our Red Ribbon Week door.  "Don't let drugs sneak up on you!"

 

 

We wrote about our monsters as if they were our pets for some fantasy fiction writing practice.

 

The next fun October activity was an Addition Scoot.  I can't remember where I got this from and I apologize if it was from your blog.  On each desk is a numbered card with an addition problem on it.   The kids visit each desk, record the addition problem in the numbered box and answer it.   They loved it.

 

 



 

 



Johnson's Corner Farm

The trip to Johnson's Corner Farm was wonderful.  The weather was warm and the kids had a great time.  We started the adventure in the pumpkin patch searching for the perfect mini pumpkin to take home.  

 

 

Then it was off to the apple trees.  It was cool to see the kids' reactions to the height of the trees.  They always illustrate such big trees when they work, but these trees were not so tall. 

 

We each got to pick 4 apples.  Lots of nice yellow apples to choose from. 

 

HMMMMMM...... which one should I pick?

 

Julianna found a good one!

 

Thank you Johnson's Corner Farm for a fun learning experience.