Thanksgiving Feast, Miss Clevenger, and More Updates

It has been awhile since I have written a blogpost, for that I am sorry.  I've been so busy lately.  I'm up super early this morning, so I thought I would add lots of pictures and a brief description about them.

On Tuesday,  November 21st, the first grade held our annual Thanksgiving feast.  In Mrs. Lee's art class, the students made necklaces, pilgrim hats and coifs, and Indian headbands.  Students wore these items to the feast.  Also, in class the students made name plates, place mats, and napkin rings.  We held our feast in the multipurpose room.  In the morning, the students went down and set up their place mats and other items where they wanted to sit during the feast.   A huge thank you goes out to all the parents that donated items and/or helped serve and clean up during the feast.  Another huge thank you goes out to Burger's Smokehouse for providing the meat and for our own cafeteria ladies for providing the mashed potatoes.  Another shout out goes to our custodial staff for helping to set up the feast too!  Here are some pictures of the feast and of us making the turkey cookies in the afternoon before Thanksgiving break.

Last week, we celebrated Miss Clevenger and the time she spent with us.  It was truly my pleasure to mentor such a sweet, kind, compassionate future teacher.  Miss Clevenger is certainly a one of a kind.  We will miss her dearly as the year progresses, but we will think of her often.  We were so blessed to have her in our classroom for the last 16 weeks.  We all wish her the best as she finds a classroom of her own.  Her future parents and students will be very blessed to have her in their lives.  On Monday, we threw her a surprise party.  Thank you to all the parents that donated for her gift.  She was given lots of teacher items such as post it notes, markers, pencils, pens, and stickers.  We also gave her a large box of books that she can put in her own classroom library, her very own teacher whistle for recess, and we made her a special book from the class.  Here are the pictures from the party and from her last day.  WE MISS YOU MISS CLEVENGER!!!

Here are some dates of importance as we finish out the month of December:

Friday, December 9th:  Last day for the PTO food drive.

Wednesday, December 14th:  The students will go out to the High School Performing Arts Center to practice for their Christmas program.

Thursday, December 15th:  Dress rehearsal at the Performing Arts Center (time to be announced); Program at 7:00 pm in the performing arts center.  Please have your child there NO LATER THAN 6:50 DRESSED AND READY TO GO.  They will meet their teachers in the high school music room.

Friday, December 16th:  Grinch Day, have your child wear GREEN!

Wednesday, December 21st:  Annual Polar Express Day; we will serve donuts and chocolate milk in the morning.  Students CAN WEAR PAJAMAS.  We will read the book in the week leading up to the 21st and watch the movie on this day.  This will serve as our class party.  SCHOOL WILL DISMISS AT 1:00 TODAY!

All About Pumpkins

This week was our annual Pumpkin Investigations!  I love this time of the year and all of the hands on learning the kids get to be involved in. We completed some of our investigations in the multipurpose room this year.  Each teacher was located at a different pumpkin investigation station.  The students in first grade took turns rotating through each of the rotations. This year the students investigated the pumpkins weight and height.  In addition, they completed a force and motion and sink or float experiment.  The students first made a prediction at each station and then they completed the task to confirm or reject their predictions.   Then, we took our investigations into our classroom.  We read the book "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin" by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas.  When reading this book we learned that for each line in a pumpkin there is a row of seeds.  We predicted how many seeds would be in our pumpkin, then we cut it open, pulled out the seeds, and counted the seeds.  Our pumpkin at 456 seeds! The student then got to keep one seed to place in their book.  We also read a book called "All About Pumpkins" and learned some very important vocabulary words about pumpkins.  We then completed an activity  about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  Below are some pictures of our day. The kids had so much fun and learned a lot!!  I also will get back on and add pictures of our fall party from last week when I get a chance.  Thank you to all the parents who donated pumpkins for our activity, treats, and drinks for our party.  Also a big thank you to our parents that helped out with our fall party.  We appreciate all of your help!!!