New Year

It is time for 2011 to end and 2012 to begin. I can't believe we are almost halfway through the school year. Your children are growing and learning a lot. It has been a great year so far. I hope you have had a restful holiday and are ready for school to start again. (I know I am ready to send my own children back to school).


This week we will learn what a resolution is, make a few resolutions, and learn about winter. I have a lot of fun things planned. It will be a lot of fun, I can't wait!

We are S.M.A.R.T!

Jillyn Fullmer, our PTA president, visited our classroom to inform me that as soon as they can get the electrician here our classroom will be getting one of these:

It may look like an ordinary whiteboard, but this whiteboard is an interactive whiteboard. With this your students will be able to interact with any electronic file that is projected on it, including online games, and files that I create.

I am so thankful that the PTA decided to let our class get one. It is all thanks to all that you do to support the fundraising efforts of the PTA. Please continue to support their efforts so  each class can get one.

Animal Reports

The kids have been working hard on gathering information for their animal reports that they will be sharing with the class next week. I am excited to see what they have learned.

A note will be coming home mid next week sometime, but we will be having our annual first grade holiday celebration on the Friday before we leave for the break. Along with that celebration your child is invited to wear their pajamas to school (I am). It will be a lot of fun!

On a side note, our first grade team has been awarded a grant to purchase four ipads (one for each teacher). We are quite excited. Your child will have an opportunity to use them after the break, since I will be spending a part of the break looking for appropriate "free" apps, since the grant only covered the ipads themselves. Even with the free apps, the addition of this bit of technology will be a big help. Thanks to the Iron County School District Foundation and Mr. Moyle for making it possible.

Aren't we lucky?

Compare and Contrast

We had a fun week reading many of the different gingerbread stories available. We looked at what was the same and what was different about each. We also made gingerbread houses and sorted them by even and odd numbers. Our gingerbread experiments turned out different than we expected, and most of our class eats gingerbread men by eating the leg first.

This coming week we will break into small groups to gather information for an animal report, and present those to the class next week.

Weather and Now and Then

We have had a great time the past couple of weeks finishing up our weather unit. We learned a lot of new weather words and learned about the three main types of clouds. Hopefully your child showed you all of the hard work they have done.

We compared the life of a pilgrim boy and girl to what our lives are like now. We learned a lot about how differently kids lived a long time ago.

Water Cycle and Clouds

We have had a great week learning about the water cycle and clouds. Ask your child to tell you the parts of the water cycle and what the 3 main types of clouds are.


Here are some pictures of what we have done so far this year.

Here is our apple graph from SEP week.

Mr. Tannen taught us about voice.

Monster family glyph.

The bus garage taught us about bus safety.

Pumpkin Investigations

Pumpkin patch field trip.

Domino's Pizza demonstration.

Smokey the Bear taught us about fire safety.

Wow! We have been super busy. This is only a small sampling of what we have accomplished so far. You should be proud of your students.

Fall

We had a great week learning why we have seasons. We also worked on a Fall writing project. I'm pretty impressed at how they turned out. I can't wait until you see them!