Hello, all!
Thanks for your patience this weekend-I had to turn in my new school laptop for some routine updates, and my home one just doesn't like to do anything fancy these days :)

Homework folders will go home as soon as they come back from being laminated.

We had a blast watching and learning about monarch butterflies this week!  Alistair the caterpillar and Sasha the chrysalis spent time with us.  Our guest teacher, Mr.Carrigan from UNE, helped us look at them with a hand lens while we worked on our butterfly life cycle models.  Sasha eclosed (hatched) this weekend, and Alistair has formed his chrysalis.  My daughter took some samples of Sasha's wing scales to check their health before releasing her, so I will bring those in and we will look at them under a microscope later this week!

We reviewed short vowels, addition and subtraction, and our classroom expectations last week!  We're adding a little more each day to our classroom routine...it's a gentle process and I am happy with our progress!  Thank you for the support you offer at home!

Thank you also to all who contributed book orders-with the bonus points we earned, I was able to order several new books for our classroom guided reading library!  These are the books we will bring home each week for homework.

  Jack, showing us how to do Read to Self

Jacy and Darius show us how to Read to Someone


Thank you also to everyone who returned Eagle News on Monday and library books on Thursday!  I know that we have library on Friday, but our library time includes a story and discussion time with the librarian, plus time for her to help the children to choose their books. If we turn our books in on Thursday, they can be checked in before library classes on Friday and none of our library time has to be spent following up on that.  Thanks!! :)

Congratulations to Damon and Kendall for earning the privilege of taking Kola and Darla home this weekend! :)  Thanks for making good choices and helping to make our classroom a place where our friends can learn!  We can't wait to hear all about their adventures with Damon's and Kendall's families!

Thank you to everyone who has helped make dismissal go smoothly by...
-sending a written note that your child would be picked up and by whom
-making sure that the person picking up is on the "approved" pick-up list and has a photo ID
-giving me as much notice as possible when your child will be leaving early
:)

I hope you had a great weekend!  I spent the weekend in Augusta, working on the Maine Education Association Board of Directors, and enjoyed the last performances of the play in which I was acting.  I'm looking forward to a super week here in first grade, including a fun STEM activity this Wednesday and meeting our intern, Ms. Mooradian, tomorrow!
I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Becca



Hello, all!
It was another busy week here in first grade-completing assessments, learning routines, and adjusting to our schedule!  Thank you for helping us at home as we get used to it all!

Congratulations to Elliott and Jack-they are taking Darla and Kola home this week! :) Great job following directions and helping your friends do their best work!

We completed Leader Books for Darius, Damon, Aubrey, and Jordan!  We enjoy this fun activity to help us get acquainted with each other.

Thank you for sending back the forms-I know there are a lot of them (and, I have to process all of them for each child before sending them to the office, so I know just how many there are :) ), and I appreciate your sending them all back together.

I can tell that several children did a lot of practicing this summer with sight words/reading and working with numbers-great work!

Today we got to use the Smartboard to do a couple of math activities that had us comparing numbers, putting them in order, and finding numbers from 1-120 on a number grid.  We also learned the expectations for Read to Self and Read to Someone times.  Our first visit to the Library was today as well-thank you in advance for returning your library books in the special library bags no later than Thursday so that the librarians can have time to check them back in before our next library session.

We also had fun with our first Sharing Day!  Our next one will be on Friday, October 12, as there is a Teacher Workshop Day on Friday the 5th.

Be sure to check the Upcoming Events calendar in the menu on the right-hand side of the blog!

Have a great weekend!  The play I'm in opened this week, and I am hoping to get our kayaks in the water at least once more before it gets too chilly-I hope you have some fun plans too!

Becca

Happy First Weekend of the School Year!

We have had a very busy first week!  Thank you for the supplies, communication, and everything you do to help your child come to school ready for the day! :)

Eagle News envelopes are in the kids' backpacks.  A folder with all of those wonderful forms is included :)...thank you in advance for filling them out and returning them on Tuesday!

There are also a couple of book order flyers and a sheet explaining how book orders work-this first book order is due on September 10.

Two friends are taking home our classroom bears today-Darla and Kola.  Thank you to Soren and Brielle for working so hard and making good choices this week!  I wonder who will earn the privilege of taking the bears home next weekend? :)

As soon as I have all of the forms back, we'll post photos and other images of our week here on the blog! 😄

Have a terrific long weekend!  I'll see all my friends on Tuesday!

Becca

Welcome to our classroom blog!  This will be the place to check each week for photos, information, updates, and celebrations about our work in first grade!  Thanks for checking it each week! :)