A Winter Wonderland
I hope you all had an extremely relaxing and enjoyable holiday break with your families! I know all of the kiddos were looking forward to their Christmas celebrations and some extra time off of school to spend with their families! The last couple weeks leading up to break were busy and full of excitement! We continued our normal learning experiences, finishing up another unit in math and continued learning about ancient Mesopotamia in reading. This coming week we will begin learning about ancient Egypt and we will be comparing and contrasting how the people in both regions lived! Additionally, we continued learning new skills in spelling and phonics and even had our very first spelling test! Remember, these will be coming each week as we proceed through learning increasingly difficult phonics skills. Practicing at home will be very important!
Now on to the extra fun!! We had a couple more mystery readers join our class before break. First we had Jaxxon's mom, Miss Kitt come in and read us a fun story about Santa delivering presents to kids all over Michigan!! Next, we had Mr. Meyer come and visit. This was Cora's grandpa, he read us a Christmas story that was one of their family favorites. We LOVED having them visit!
On Monday, our fourth grade reading buddies came to our class for some reading/social time. We got to read Christmas stories with them as well as enjoy a fun, short holiday movie with them. We are always thrilled to see them join us for a little while each month!
On Wednesday, right before break, we were given a pizza party by a local business and one of our firstie moms! We would like to send out a HUGE thank you to Ms. Jessica and to Mineral Springs for donating the yummy lunch! It was such a nice treat!
The week before break we also had a visit from a couple of guests who talked to us about snow plow safety. We learned that it is extremely important to make sure and stay away from plows and from the giant drifts they might leave behind, as tempting as they may be, because there are many dangers that could occur if someone was to get too close. We even got to see a plow up close, sit behind the wheel (and try to honk the horn) and even sign our names on the plow! It was super fun!
On our last day before break, we were greeted by a Winter Wonderland Party! Our whole school has worked extremely hard at earning STAR tickets and have been filling up our school bucket all year. They were able to fill the bucket before break and were given a Winter Wonderland Party, packed with outdoor games, skating in the hallway, card making, stories and hot chocolate, a movie and popcorn and even some fun games in the gym! They were SO excited to have received the reward after working so hard at being Safe, Trustworthy, Accountable and Respectful students!
When our class came back to the room after the party, we joined with Mrs. Powell's class for our First Grade Book Exchange! We played musical chairs and had a lot of fun playing a game of switcharoo until it was time to finally open a new book! They were so excited to open their new book and get started reading them right away! It was also SO encouraging seeing them thanking the friend who gave that book to them as well as finding out who received the book they brought....I could definitely see there was joy in giving their gift to someone else!
In the afternoon, we played some class games and then bundled up and went outside to play! What better way to enjoy the beautiful sunshine than to get out their and build a snow fort with your friends!! Before leaving for home we warmed back up in the classroom with some delicious hot chocolate!
I am excited to see everyone again after having almost 2 whole weeks off and am excited for the learning opportunities ahead! We will be starting off our short week with New Year's Resolutions! I can't wait!!
