Fun Friday!

Hi families!!! Happy Friday to everyone. What a fun day we have had in first grade. We kicked off our morning by wrapping up our August journal. Today we wrote about the best part of first grade so far. Invite your child to tell you what they wrote about and have them tell you WHY they like their topic so much. We tried out our first "Fun Friday" in first grade. Fun Friday is modeled after Kindergarten Mania and it was our first attempt at this in first grade. It went AWESOME! All 3 first grade classrooms were opened up for the kids to explore. Each classroom had different activities that showcased things we have been working on for the past 2 weeks. Be sure to have your child tell you what classrooms they visited and what activities they liked the best. The kids were experts at transitioning and staying on task. I was so happy with how this first trial run of Fun Friday went. Way to go Firsties!!! Has your child told you about "EEKK!" buddies yet? Be sure to ask them what "EEKK" stands for and what you do at EEKK buddy time. Today we tried out our first Reader's Theater with our EEKK buddy. We made stick puppets and took turns reading this week's story "Let's Tap!". This activity encourages the children to not only take turns with their reading, but allows them to try out different vocal expressions as we begin to tackle fluency. It also requires the kids to use the pictures to help them determine what is happening in the story and use the appropriate characters at the correct times. These are great comprehension skill builders and the kids did GREAT! We have spent all week talking about the 3 ways to read a book: 1. Look at the pictures 2. Look at the Words 3. RE-TELL! I have given the kids a long-weekend homework assignment. They are bringing home their "Let's Tap!" puppets and they are asked to re-tell the story to someone at home using their puppets. This will help your child strengthen their comprehension skills. You can check their comprehension by logging into ThinkCentral.com because it is finally up and running! The (very long) directions on how to login to our text book website on located on the sidebar of this blog. Check it out! In math, we finally got to work on our BRAND NEW laptops. They are fancy. We experimented with some learning games, many of which you can play at home if you click the links on the sidebar of this webpage, too! The most exciting news for the kids today was that the first grade classes were the TOP sellers of cookie dough so far. What did that mean for us? SNOW CONE PARTY!!!! Yep, all of the first graders got to enjoy the end of their day with a nice, cool, yummy snow cone. Thank you SO much to everyone for your effort to make that possible for the kids. They were thrilled. I will post pictures later....Speaking of pictures, don't worry I have heard back from everyone and am in the process of putting together our beginning-of-the-year slideshow so that you can see what we have been up to. You may want to watch the show with your child so that they can RE-TELL you what is happening in all of the pictures! It is my goal to have the show uploaded and on our page tonight after my babies go to bed....check back. If you are a Wildcat, enjoy the game tonight! If you are not, enjoy your night! Don't forget NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY!!! Happy Labor Day. Let me know if you need anything! Thanks so much!