Warm Weather and a Warm Welcome

Hello families! I am happy to say I returned to school Wednesday and was greeted by a ton of smiles, hugs and excitement. The students had a lot of fun filling me in on everything they had been working on while I was away. We spent time on Wednesday just adjusting back to our normal routine, reviewing our class rules and expectations. We also completed our work for our hallway display and I have to say they did a wonderful job! Our first grade hall is so bright and cheerful. It is such a pleasant sight to see all of the bright and cheery butterflies and frogs all over the walls along with the students' work on the frog and butterfly life cycles; which they spent time learning about the past couple of weeks. Take a look at their work below:

As we worked through the week, our class worked hard to learn about telling time to the hour and half-hour. We learned how to tell and write the time on both an analog clock and a digital clock. To help us learn, we played a fun Knockout game. Playing in two teams, we competed to tell time to the hour and half hour. We had a lot of fun and were even able to play a couple of rounds against Mrs. Powell's class. We are hoping to continue a standing game of knockout with Mrs. Powell's class every Friday as we finish the year.

Additionally, this Friday I was able to enjoy some time with a few of our friends during lunch. These kids have worked hard this year and continued to work while I was gone, earning their DOJO points to receive a PIZZA party! I can't wait to enjoy another lunch like this and I believe it will be soon! We have some more friends who are close to earning their reward!

I am happy to say that we were able to enjoy the beautiful weather quite a bit this week! We ate lunch outside, enjoyed free choice outside on Friday and even took story time outside! It was a blast and we will definitely be reading outside again as long as the weather is nice enough...oh what a little bit of extra sunshine and fresh air can do!!

As we enter this last home stretch will be extremely busy! Can you believe that we only have 5 weeks left?!?! As you know, we have begun our animal research for our school wide Museum of Learning. June 2nd promises to provide a variety of exciting learning exhibits including topics like the human body, dioramas, and even our very own first grade Talking Zoo! All of our firsties have now picked their very own animal to research, write about and eventually learn how to present to you! We will be spending time during Science as well as other times during the upcoming weeks reading and listening to stories about our individual animals. We may even be able to view live web cams of our animals too!

In addition, please be on the look our for information about our Walk-A-Thon and how your child can raise pledges for walking! We will also be sending information home this week about an amazing summer reading program opportunity! Please watch this short video, made by some View's very own creative and talented TechKnow kids, to get a preview of the program!