Exploring Our "Adopted" Tree

This week we began a unit on Trees. We will study trees over the next 2 weeks as well. On Tuesday we went out to observe our tree. This tree is right outside our classroom, too! Check out these curious, excited first graders as they made observations of the tree.

Sheila Rae The Brave Maps

We are half way through an author study on Kevin Henkes. This past week we spent some time working on these fun maps after reading the story, Sheila Rae The Brave by Kevin Henkes. Sheila Rae is a brave girl who gets lost one day on her way home. Luckily her little sister was following her and helped her get home showing she could be brave too. The girls made many stops along the way, some very imaginative ones too. The students drew maps from school to home to show how Sheila Rae got home.

1st Day Highlights!

Wow! "What a long day!" Most kids said today somewhere between 10:00am and 3:35pm at dismissal. This transition between kindergarten and first grade is always so hard for these sweet 6 year olds. I was quite pleased with how they did today! At the end of the day I asked students to tell me what they wanted me to write about their favorite parts of the day. Here they are:

"Recess"
"Lunch"
"My favorite part was lunch."
"Snack"
"I like cubbies."
"My favorite thing is recess."
"My favorite thing is lunch."
"Read"
"I liked math."
"I love eating lunch."
"I like doing the calendar."
"I like everything."
"I liked lunch."
"I liked doing lunch."
"I liked free choice."
"I like eating at school."
"Recess"
"I like the cafeteria."

Their favorite parts mostly consisted of eating, but that's ok with me as I like eating and think it's important! It will be fun to see how favorite highlights soon become reading, writing, math, friends, science etc. It won't be long! Thanks for sharing your precious children with me each day. I just know we're off to a great start for a wonderful year! - Mrs. Bowers