Schumacher's Safari

We are almost there!

We think we can, we think we can, we think we can...make it through the next few days until the holiday break!  I am a bit grinch green with envy of the other districts that are out celebrating with their families this week, but we can do it! We have decided to have some fun this week and squeeze some learning in there along the way.

Monday we will be learning all about circle stories by Laura Numeroff (If You Give A Mouse a Cookie).  We will have a fun brown bag book club meeting in which we will be sharing our favorite stories.  We are even planning on writing our own circle stories.

Tuesday is GRINCH day!  Wear green and bring a Santa hat if you have one!  We will have so much fun reading the story of the Grinch.  We also get to visit the Science Lab that day and finish up our sound unit.

 

Wednesday is our holiday party at 12:00.  We will be having some fun Frosty the Snowman lessons in the morning! 

 

Thursday is a wrap up day to finish all our work and prepare for the new year!  Mrs. S gets to pack up all the holiday stuff for another year and go home and REST!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

So that is our week in a nutshell (or should I say nuthouse!) 

I am looking for anyone who sews???  I am in need of a table skirt for one of our classroom rectagle tables that will hide all my stuff  help us stay organized.  If you are crafty in that way, I will provide the materials and owe you my gratitude!  Just let me know. 

Here is a wish list of classroom supplies we would love to have for the new year:  white cardstock, baby wipes, small cap erasers for pencils, white paper plates (large), geoboards, packs of yellow highlighters, and thin Crayola markers.

Special Thanks to all our great volunteers that helped us with a craft day on Friday! 

We really enjoyed our Mystery Reader, Frank Kline.

He had us laughing at the Bad Kitty book he brought in.  We really loved the candy canes! 

 

Also...NO HOMEWORK ALL WEEK!  Have a wonderful holiday and I will see you NEXT year!

 

 

 

 

Mystery Question!!!

Robbie and Greyson are decorating the Christmas tree!  Robbie put up nine green balls and Greyson put up some red ones.  There were 20 balls in all on the tree.  How many did Greyson put on?  Draw your thinking and show the number sentence!

The Countdown has started!

We are getting closer to the winter holiday break but I still have a lot to teach!  Please remind your student about coming to school on time, prepared with snack, homework, backpack and a coat each day!  Most of all tell them to pack their listening skills!  Wow we were oh so talkative last week!  I know how excited they are, (7 hours a day with them!) but we have much to focus on this week.  We will be taking our checkpoint testing in Language Arts and Math on Tuesday and Wednesday.  These are important end of the nine weeks tests as well as cumulative assessments to see how much we have learned.  Please keep to the routine as much as possible these last few days.  Also, please remember that Wednesday nights homework is to get on First in Math.  It is homework and I do print out who gets on and your child gets a reward in class for their participation.  I do not allow my own children on the computer or TV during the week, but for the 15 minutes for First in Math, it is allowed since it it an assignment.  Please help support this assignment.  We are assessing this week on our facts to 12.  I have seen big gains in the children who visit the site regularly. 

We had a great week working on learning all about plane and 3D shapes in math.  We are still working on trading bills to $20.00.  We worked on ed, ing and s endings in phonics.  Our reading skills focused on comparing books of the The Gingerbread Man.  We enjoyed many versions, kept a gingerbread journal and recorded the different endings of each book.  We began a unit on sound and we visited the science lab last week for magnet centers.  We will be visiting the lab again the week before the break to enjoy some sound centers.  We finished up our last personal narrative that will be assessed on our favorite holiday memory.  Another skill we worked on this week was our listening and speaking standard.  We followed directions to create an elf for our wall.  We also did our sight word challenge differently.  The students had to listen to the correct places in a row of trees to place their spelling words.  The directions were only read once!  It was interesting to see who could really focus.   So as you can see...we were busy little firsties last week.

We want to thank Ainsleigh's Nanny for being our Mystery Reader!

Please don't forget to return the information that Corey Strapp sent home last week.  We need that info to make our holiday party fun!  Don't forget our holiday party is Wednesday, December 21st at 12:00.  Hope to see you there! 

 

Here are a few pictures of us at magnet centers.  Sorry about the quality, all I had was my phone that day!!!

Using our mystery bottles and magnets to attract objects!

 

 

 

 

 

We were synergizing to share materials and information!

 

 

 

 

 

What will a magnet pull through?  We made a  hypothesis and recorded our results.

 

 

What will stick to a magnet sorting activity.

 

 

 

I appologize for not getting this out last week but here is our wonderful Voyage of Discovery day.  this was so much fun.  Thanks again to all the parents who helped pull it off.  Special thanks to Corey Strapp for organizing all the help! 

 

 

Create your own photo album

Leadership Day!

 

Pickett’s Mill Elementary will be hosting its

First Annual Leadership Day on January 27^th.

In preparation for this fabulous event, we would

like to take a moment to let you know a little

more about Leadership Day 2012.

• There will be over 100 visitors attending to see The 7 Habits in action.
• Unfortunately, with such a large influx of visitors, we will be unable to accommodate parent visitors on this special day. We will definitely document the occasion with tons of pictures and videos that we will share!
• All students will participate in a leadership role for this day. Some will be leaders who prepare materials, hall displays, or information for our visitors. Others will be leaders who have a speaking role, a performance role, or serve as greeters and guides for guests. Every classroom will have a guest visitor on Leadership Day and therefore all students will be sharing as leaders within their classrooms as well.
• Next year, we are sure our students and staff will come up with even more opportunities to showcase student leadership on this special day.
• We are asking all students to “Dress for Success” this day.

December is here!

Where did November go?  Seems like I just got all the fall decorations out and the turkeys and pumpkins strategically placed throughout my house and it is now time to put all that away!  Do you have your tree up yet?  I am a firm believer of finish one holiday before you start another.  This weekend will give way to snowmen, Santa, gingerbread and all things Christmas at my house.  I really look forward to the decorating and getting into the spirit of the holidays.  Someone special showed up last week in our classroom.  Did you child tell you about Krinkle, our elf?  He arrived on December 1st and the class could not be more excited.  He is watching our great behavior and helping us to stay focused.  I will try to get a picture of him.  I saw one of our students talking to him and telling him their wants for the holidays!  Too cute!

Another way that I get into the spirit each year is to attend Impact Dance production of the Toymaker's Christmas.  It is a beautiful production to help welcome in the holidays.  I was so excited to see it this year because our very own Taitum C was in it!  What a wonderful job she did dancing as a marshmallow doll.  I was so proud and I whispered to everyone around me, "She is in my class!"  Great job, Taitum!

We had a great week of learning in our room.  We are working on counting forwards and backwards on a number line.  We used a hundereds board to skip count by twos, fives and tens.  We also worked on patterns with numbers such as odd and even.  We had so much fun discovering blends in phonics.  We played games with creating words with tr, br and gr.  In reading, we reviewed our reading strategies and worked to sort and identify what type of strategy will help us in different situations.  We had a great Tasty Tuesday from Kayla and we did some fun descriptive writing.  We are working on finishing a personal narrative about our favorite holiday memory.  We are using our editing and revising skills.  The highlight of our week was Friday.  I hope your child came home excited about our Voyage of Discovery.  The first grade classes began our day taking on the role of the Corps of Discovery.  We met with Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark to receive our directions.  We followed the route to the Pacific Ocean.  Along the way we met Sacagawea, saw some prarie dogs, traded horses, learned about the value of plants and animals, climed mountains and saw bears met with a medicine woman and finally reached the Pacific.  We even had a chance to be the returning heroes to Ms. Fountain's Kindergarten class.  I hope your child shared their rucksac full of goodies that they collected along the way.

Special thanks to all the hard working volunteers from our class that helped make this a very special learning experience for our class!  Everyone had so much fun and learned so much!  I will post some pictures soon!

We also had a great time with Ms. Stewart, our Mystery Reader!  Thanks!

Please note that the weather has been quite unpredictable lately.  Please send a coat EVERYDAY with your child.  We will NOT go outside unless everyone has a coat.  We have also had many students forget their snack each day.  I do not provide extra snack.  Help your child create a routine of packing a healthy snack each night before they go to bed. 

 

Have you heard about Ginger?  Ginger, the gingerbread man is coming home each night with a student!  Please enjoy him but be sure to send him back to school the next day.  Please do not feel you have to provide photographs of your adventures, with the stress of the holidays, hand drawn pictures are great!  Have fun!

Please mark your calendars:  our class party is scheduled for Wednesday, December 21st at 12:00.   Watch for an email from our room mom, Corey Strapp, for items needed.  I hope to see you all there for some Frosty Fun!

 

Mystery Question!

Melaina and Tatum F. are training to be Elves!  They wrapped many presents!  They gave each package two bows.  They wrapped 9 packages.  How many bows did they use?