Unity Day!

Ms. Hoffman is a total rock star!  She planned an amazing day for our students today.  For those of you who do not know what Unity Day is I will attempt to explain it the best I can.  Students are split into mixed aged groups and go with different staff members for the majority of the day.  When they are with their team, they play games and solve puzzles that involve teamwork.   The adults are there to supervise and guide them in the right direction, but we do not give them solutions or answers.  It is really awesome to see the leader in each student come out at some point in the day.  I did not have any students from our class in my group today, but I did manage to snap a few pics as I seen them out and about. 

As you can see they were very excited to start our day!

Students had to build a tower using spaghetti noodles, string, and tape.  The marshmallow HAD to be at the top.  This was challenging.  It happened to be a kindergartner in my group who had the suggestion to stick the spaghetti noodles into the marshmallow!

This was another tricky station.  The students each had a string and they had to transfer the ball from the ring in the middle onto a cone.  This required A LOT of communication!

This one was a little disgusting, but the kids LOVED it!  They had to find gummy worms in the bottom of the oatmeal water with their TOES!

This game required the students to transfer an entire bucket of water to the other side of the sidewalk using only solo cups and they had to pass the water into each teammates cup on the way there!

We took a break from the action!  What an exhausting day!

I know some other staff members took pictures.  I will update as I get more!

Thank you so much to all the volunteers, as this day would not have been possible without you!

First Grade Fun!

We have started working in our new math curriculum!  The kids had fun using egg cartons as ten frames yesterday.  We are doing a lot of work with number bonds (fact families) right now.  We are mainly focusing on the addition facts in the number bonds.  If you have any questions about the math papers that are coming home, please do not hesitate to shoot me an email or give me a call.

In Art today the kids worked on painting their umbrellas for the Peace Parade on September 11th. 

Due to Unity Day on Friday, our class will go to Library for the first time tomorrow.  Our regular Library time will be on Friday as long as it is a normal week. 

We have had so much fun working and learning so far in First Grade.  Friday will be so much fun!  I can't wait for the kids to experience their very first Unity Day!

Woohoo!

We all survived our fist week back to school!  I am so proud of the first graders, I am sure they were exhausted every day when they came home.  Getting back into the routine of school can be tricky for kids.  They worked hard and were real troopers this week.

Next week we will be on a more normal routine with the exception of Friday.  Friday will be Unity Day, which I am VERY excited about.  Normally we would have Library on Friday, but Mrs. Hickman rescheduled us for another day this week so we don't miss our very first week of Library.

We will begin Fundations next week.  We will be working on lowercase letter sounds and letter formation.  The first unit lasts for three weeks.  We will also begin our first Math unit which deals with adding and subtracting.  We will begin with learning about number bonds.  You may see a little bit of homework come home with your son or daughter in the next couple weeks.  In Shared Reading we will continue to read stories that encourage character development.  The students are very excited because I told them we would begin Reading Centers also next week!

If you have not yet signed up for Remind 101, please do so.  It is a great way to get reminders about things happening in our classroom.  Last year I had every parent sign up and it was so nice to be able to send out reminders about things and I even surprised students with pajama days a couple of times.

I attached a screenshot of the directions.  Just text @laue2014 to the number 217-712-2124.  When you text that number, it will shoot you a confirmation text.  Make sure you confirm that you signed up!  If you have any questions let me know!  You do not need a special app on your phone to sign up for reminders. 

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!  Book Orders are due September 5th if you are interested in ordering!

Lacey Walker...

Nonstop Talker is a great book that we read today.  We talked about how Lacey Walker did not use good self-control at the beginning of the story, but at the end she learned that using self-control and listening to others is a lot of fun!  After reading the story we talked about what good listeners look like.

We also got to play a math game today.  We played Race To the Top with adding one to numbers.  The kids had a lot of fun!

Here is another picture from yesterday.  She decided we matched with our glasses and asked to take a picture.  Of course, I agreed.  :)

I will add some more first day of school pictures tonight.  

Just a few notes:

*Book orders are due September 5th.

*Please return Back to School Night papers as soon as possible. 

Great First Day!

We had a great first day together!  

Here are some of our first day pictures!  Please send in your sign off sheet for your child's picture to appear on here if you have not yet done so!  I will add student's first day pic, as soon as I get the sign off form. :)

We talked about self-control today.  Mrs. Laue blew bubbles and all the kids went CRAZY popping them.  Then I challenged them to use self-control and not pop the bubbles.  I was AMAZED, not one child popped the bubbles.  They showed great self-control.  We also read the story Can't Wait Willow.  We talked about how she did not use self-control at the beginning of the story, but she learned her lesson when she missed the circus.  The next day Willow tried again, and she used self-control.  We went over a plan for when we come into situations where we have lots of choices.  

1st...Stop!

2nd....Think

3rd....What could happen?

4th...Is that what you want to happen?

We went through some scenarios and role played in the classroom.  We will continue to talk about self-control this week in class. 

Meet The Teacher Night...

Meet the Teacher Night for 1st Grade is Tuesday, August 19th at 6:00.  I can't wait to see all my new first graders.  Please have your child bring his/her supplies along so they don't have such a heavy backpack the first day!  

A New School Year...

is just around the corner! 

I have been a busy bee getting our classroom ready.  I am lucky because I have two adorable little helpers, who maybe don't really help too much, but keep me company  when I am getting things done.  

These two little monkeys are my daughters.  Natalie is 5 and Whitney will be 3 in November. This has been an extra special back to school season for our family because Natalie will start kindergarten in just a few days.  We are all very excited for her to start a new adventure.  

Besides getting the classroom ready for an AWESOME group of 1st graders, I have had lots of fun this summer.  We took a family vacation to see friends in Texas, we went to the zoo, the aquarium, Magic Waters, Pearl Lake, Lake Summerset, Crystal Lake and so much more.  Here are some highlights from my summer break...

This was taken before we headed to the Mesquite Rodeo in Texas.

I hope that you have had a fun filled summer also.  I can't wait to meet my new group of kids.

Here is a sneak peek of our classroom...