Winter Wonderland

We had a blast at our winter wonderland!   Thanks to all those mom’s that came and helped out!  You made all of this possible!

Day 1 Wednesday

We made our reindeer bags, a penguin ornament, a snowflake button ornament, a silver bell, a holiday character ornament, and bagged up some reindeer food.  They had a great time and were so well behaved.  Things could have been a little hairy with 36 student in one room but I was so proud of their self control.  I never once had to talk to the coloring center that was all independent on the circle time rug. 

Day 2 Thursday

We made a gingerbread ornament, a holiday character ornament, a Santa mouse ornament, decorated a Christmas tree and a sugar cookie.  They went hog-wild at the cookie center.  We gave them free reign.  The only rule was they could only put their knife into the frosting tub once.  We told them to make the dip a good one! 

Today we watched and read The Polar Express. After students passed out the goodies that some students brought in.  They enjoyed opening them up and sharing with their friends.  They enjoyed the jingle bells and danced around the room in delight.

I will miss my crew, but will enjoy this time with my family as I know you will with your families!  See you in the new year!  Merry Christmas! 

Monday Update…December 13th

· Both reading classes will stay on s-blends this week. The s blends are sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw. The rhyme we have taught students to help with sc and sk is…K takes i and e. C takes the other three. What are the other three? a, o, and u. So they have to listen for the vowel sound to know which one to use. I hope this helps you support their learning at home.

· Read your passage for 1 minute each night! We have seen how this is helping your child have reading stamina on FAIR testing and on our monthly OPM’s!

· Remember to send in your $2 dollars for our Winter Wonderland on Tuesday December 14^th! Our CLASS WINTER WONDERLAND will be Wednesday the 15^th (8:30-10:30, Thursday the 16^th (8:30-10:30. If you want to come and help run a center and you haven’t already let me know please send in a note so that we can plan accordingly!

· FRIDAY is an EARLY RELEASE at 12:20!!!!! Happy holidays!

· To cut down on the time it takes I only have been sending home the Behavior Passports that need to be seen and signed. Please continue to check the last sleeve to see if your child received a whole punch as a reminder of our class behavior.

· The Kindergarten PTO program is at 7:00 on Tuesday and Thursday. They are accepting chocolate chip cookies and brownies that are individually wrapped.

· Yearbook orders are due December 17^th!

· See you back on January 4^th. Enjoy your break and come back ready to learn, learn, learn. Your gift to me over break can be to read a little bit each day! J I will miss you all!

· · SCHOOL WEBSITE: http://jbe.levyschools.org/r/home

UF Fisheries

Can I just say I love this field trip.  The students get so much out of it and it came just  when we got our Animals 2 X 2 kit, which was great.  We headed out on that cool Wednesday morning ready to learn and of course do some fishing. 

The first fish we learned about is the long nosed gar!  One of my sweet little ones cried in fear and gave all the chaperone’s a chuckle.  A memory I will likely not forget.  The students loved to learn about this fish and how it used its body to look like a stick when it was looking for food. 

We learned about the large mouth bass and check out his pink gills!  Pink gills means a health fish, white gills means a dead fish.  One thing interesting that we learned was that fish can live a short time out of water as long as they have water drops on their gills.

We learned about cat fish and how their whiskers don’t sting you like most people think.  They use them for feeling around.  They do however have shard barbs in their fins that can be harmful.  The top left picture is of a sucker fish who was let out into the wild.  Mrs. Sharon’s plea to use was to not release fish into the wild because they can be harmful to our natural Florida habitat.  Do you just love these little ones expressions of shock and curiosity.  Once done with the big fish we headed over to the small wading pools, where the students got to use nets to find small fish and bugs. 

The students loved this and some even got their feet a little damp.  They found minnows, tadpoles, snails, water boatman’s, water scorpions, dragon fly babies, and probably more than I can remember right now. 

After that we ate lunch on the dock and enjoy the warm weather, visited and discussed all the things we had learned earlier.

Then it was fishing time and man did we have some skilled fisherman!  The students received a cane poll and a baggie of old hot dogs to fish with and almost all the children caught one.  Some students got bigger ones, some got small ones but fun was had by all!

After looking at these next few pictures I think you can say we had a great time! 

Thanks to all the chaperones that came and experienced this day with us and helped.  You were so appreciated!

Life Got Busy

I have things I want to post but it has been busy around here at school and in my personal life.  It just comes with the holidays but I do feel awful for not being better about the blog and our class communication.  I am working on getting back on track.  I now have a fully functioning computer back and that makes life so much easier.  Please bear with me :)

A Fun Kids Band

A month or so we read the story “A Fun Kids Band” and had vocabulary words such as perform and audience.  To help give students a real world experience of performing for an audience they made instruments.  The students and their families created instruments with items they could find at home.  We had shakers, drums, guitars, flutes, and rhythm sticks.  Students took turns playing together, but they most liked to play altogether as loud as they could.  Ms. Sharon from the clinic came out and they performed for her.  Then Mrs. Inman’s class came out to be our audience and we performed for them  The students loved playing their instruments! 

Warming Up!  

Performing for our audience!

I love my musicians!

K-9 Raven

Detective Carlise and his K-9 Raven came to talk about fire safety.  After walking to the fire department he offered to come and talk to the students about his job and how K-9 Raven helps him investigate how fires start.  He spoke about how we should not play with fire and review some of the things we learned from the fire department.

      All the children got to pet K-9 Raven if they wanted to!

We then went outside and Mr. Osteen helped out Detective Carlise put out training spot with a chemical that smelt like accelerant.  Then he and K-9 Raven when out to look for the “source” of the fire.  The students enjoyed seeing K-9 Raven at work!

If you have noticed the children were in their costumes….we did this after the dance!  It was a crazy day of fun and learning! 

Football Fun

I love to be involved in my students lives and support them in their out of school activities.  I have several students who are involved in flag football.  I have been able to attend everyone of the students game.  I have cheered for the Cowboys, Seminoles, and finally the Gators.  If your child is active in a sport or another activity let me know so I can come out and support! 

The little guy on the right in blue is my student!

 

Go Gators!

 

I also got to watch the Seminoles play the Cowboys a few weeks ago!  I love how the mom’s had made a sign for the players to run through!  They loved it! 

Go Cowboys! Go Seminoles!

Halloween Fun and a Bunch of Dancing

The four teachers at our end of the hall teamed up to do some fun Halloween centers.  Mrs. Inman’s class made oobleck from Dr. Seuss, Mrs. Thomas’s class had to feel “body parts” and describe them, and Mrs. Keene watched ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.’  In my class the student did a candy corn sort.  We had pumpkin candy corn, Indian candy corn and the original.  They sorted it, graphed it, and added it.  They did great and had fun too!

Remember the PTO change drive a few weeks back.  I am sure you all have heard we won first place for first grade!  Well on Friday we enjoyed cheese and pepperoni pizza with some Capri Suns!  One of our class mom’s brought in taste ghost brownies for the students to enjoy! 

Did you notice costumes in the pictures above?  Well we were enjoying character dress up day.  We had Disney princess’s, Iron Man, Johnny Appleseed, a doctor, a pirate, a fireman, and a ninja! 

All the student who earned 7 bear bucks for good behavior were able to attend the Character Dance!  The students danced, danced, and danced some more!  A few stopped to have some snack and drink for an addition 3 bear bucks. 

 

The students had a great time and were rewarded for their good behavior!  I loved dancing and having fun with my book characters! 

Our Class Pumpkin

Last week we did a few pumpkin activities to celebrate Halloween.  We used our senses to explore and investigate our class pumpkin.  I thought this pumpkin had a pretty carving face!

We smelled it!  They thought it smelled like stinky garbage.

They had to feel it!  Gross, slimy, slippery were some comments that I received.

Can you hear the seeds?

 

Recording their observations/data!

Then the serious question came up.  Do we carve it scary or happy?  The majority vote was scary sharp teeth.  

 

Our crooked scary smiling pumpkin!

Happy to show off their pumpkin!

Making scary faces with their pumpkin!