Thanks for Thanksgiving

I hope this week finds each of you relaxing with family and friends.  I am so very thankful for the teaching job that I have had for 10 wonderful years.  I enjoy teaching my group of firsties each year.  My job is extremely challenging and rewarding all the same.  Thank you for entrusting your precious child to me each and everyday.  I am also very thankful for each of my firsties parents.  You all have been so very helpful this year...volunteering when needed.  I am so appreciative of all of your support.  The following are some pictures of our Thanksgiving Feast.  A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this event happen.  (any pictures of students' faces blurred are due to the fact that those individuals are not allowed to be published on the internet.)

Upcoming Events. Retell Rope, and Fairytales

Hello!  Let's start this post by discussing some of our upcoming events.  Our Thanksgiving feast is approaching quickly.  If you volunteered to bring in items for the feast, please have them here no later than Monday, November 23rd.  Also, if you volunteered your time for the feast please arrive at the school no later than 10:45a.m. on the day of the feast.  A huge thank you goes out to everyone who is volunteering in some way to help our Thanksgiving feast be successful.  This is an event that we have done for years and we are thrilled to continue the tradition again this year.  A really big thank you is extended to Burger's Smokehouse for donating the turkey for the day.  I'd also like to give a shout out to our cafeteria as they donate the mashed potatoes for the day too.  The rest of the meal is provided by our wonderful parents that donated food items.  And lastly, a big thank you to our custodial staff for setting up the tables and chairs in the multipurpose for this fun event. We plan to spend the afternoon with our pre-k buddies decorating turkey cookies (again donated by our generous parents).

The first graders have been working on their upcoming musical Christmas on Candy Cane Lane.  Mrs. Friedrich delivered the parts for this musical on Friday.  All parts were handed out on Friday and placed in your child's blue homework folder.  Please put this information in a safe place.  If your child has lines or lyrics for this program, please be sure that he/she is practicing them nightly for our program.  We will be going out to the high school performing arts center the week of the program to practice.  We will also have our dress rehearsal on the 17th of December during school.  The musical will be performed for parents and the community on December 17th at 7 p.m. in the high school performing arts center.

We've been spending the last week reading fairytales and learning how to retell a story using key details from the text.  The students have been using our class retell rope to help aide in their retelling of the story.  My favorite fairytale versions are those retold by James Marshall.  We read his version of the Godilocks and the Three Bears and the students learned how to retell a story in sequence with the retell rope I created for them.

We then used what we knew and read James Marshall's versions of The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Hood.  It seemed only fitting after reading each of these fairytales that I introduced the students to some fractured fairytales....fairytales with a twist.  We then read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Hot and compared them with the original fairytales.  Our goal was to also read one to compare with Godilocks, but time just didn't allot for it.  We will continue our work on comparing and contrasting next week to finish out the unit.

I will be back next week with a post filled with pictures from our feast.  Remember we just have 2 short days this week.  Monday is the last collection day for Major Savor cards.  Progress reports will go home on Tuesday the 24th.  Also don't forget there is NO SCHOOL on Wednesday November 25th - Friday November 27th.

Life Long Learning

I have always loved learning new things.  It is something I hope that I pass down to my children and my kiddies at school....a genuine love of learning.  Since the beginning of my teaching career, I continued to keep current in all things education.  I love going to conferences to learn from the best of the best.  This year was no different.  This past week, I was out of the classroom to attend the Missouri Early Learning Conference.  It was a great learning experience and I met some of the educational leaders and authors that I admire.  Among those...Tim Rasinski and Marc Brown.  It was a very exciting conference and I learned a lot that I plan on bringing back to my classroom.  Many of things I am bringing back are things I once done in the classroom, but pushed aside years later.  Re-learning of their importance in the classroom and with reading fluency and comprehension I am so excited to get back to them.  Some of my future goals for our classroom: daily poetry, daily word making, using authors as mentors in our writing workshop.   I can't wait to get back into the classroom this week.  I missed the students, but I heard they had a wonderful two days!

I can't even believe it is almost Thanksgiving.  This weekend my family and I have already had not one but two Thanksgiving dinners.  I want to thank all of my wonderful parents for your help in making our Thanksgiving feast possible.  If you haven't done so already, please bring in the highlighted items on your list that went home last Wednesday.  If you are unable to bring in these items, please let me know as soon as possible so I can assign the item to someone else.  

Also, if you forgot to return your yearbook order form, please do so no later than tomorrow morning.

I'll leave you with a picture of our first grade team with the author Marc Brown.  We even got him to autograph our books!

Upcoming Thanksgiving Feast

The book fair was a success.  Thank you to those that attended family night.  Our class had the largest attendance so we WON $30 worth of books for our classroom library.  The kids were so excited!! 

This month is our annual Thanksgiving feast.  The students have been working on Indian and Pilgrim costumes during art class with Mrs. Lee to wear during our feast day.  We would like to thank Burger’s Smokehouse for donating our turkey.  The cafeteria ladies will be making our mashed potatoes.  With the donations of our parents we will have corn, green beans, and rolls.  The feast donation letter went home earlier this week.  If you would be willing to donate something for our feast, please fill out this form and return it no later than Wednesday, November 11th.

Next Thursday and Friday I will be out of the building.  I am attending the Missouri Early Learning conference.  Please direct any transportation changes to the office on those two days.  Thank you!

Below are some pictures of our fall party last week.  The kids had a blast.  I want to thank everyone that brought in drinks and snacks.  Also, a special thank to the parent helpers that attended the party and prepared the mummy wrap game for our class.  They had a blast as you can see in the pictures.  Thank you everyone!!!