Super Achiever Aiden!

After three picture attempts we had three pictures with eyes closed!!!  Aiden was picked for Super Achiever this week because he is very responsible and brings his take home book back everyday!  He is well on his way to making the movie party!!!  He is also responsible when subs are in the room because he helps them with anything they need!  Thanks Aiden for being soooo responsible!  Keep up the good work and you will surely impress those 1st grade teachers next year!

Boehm Concepts and Winter Assessments

The assessment process and skills checking has begun in our room!  We are doing much better at the Boehm Test that the parents and I talked about in October.  The top missed this time around by 8 or 9 out of 19 students were:

Fewest

Third

Half

Right

Before

Left

Skip

Least

Equal

We will be working on these in class during our question of the day and starting in small group in January!  If you could help me and your student out by working on using these at home that would be wonderful!

I am also starting skills check.  I will be assessing numbers, letters, sounds, rhyming words, sight words, patterns, counting, knowledge of graphs, healthy habits, colors, shapes.  Its never tooo late to start practicing at home if you haven't! 

Also keep sending the take home books back!  We had a lot of students recieve the skating pass!  If you student didn't get it, there are still 5 months that you can do so they get the movie pass at the end of the year! 

***Another note:  Its officially winter.  Please make sure that you are sending your child in BOOTS, SNOWPANTS, WINTER COATS, HATS, GLOVES, and warmer clothing!  It is tooo cold to not have these items!!!

Thank you readers for taking the time to read this lengthy, no-pictured post! 

Have a GREAT week!
Miss Mills

Using Non-Fiction Books

Not only do we use our books to find letters and letter sounds in words. We use them to learn more about what we are talking about and the students are then teaching each other!  I find this very cool.  Take a listen to some of the students telling you or showing you something they found!  Sorry they are all sideways!!  I haven't figured moviemaker out!

Hope you enjoy!!

December's First Super Achiever

Joanne was our super achiever this week.  In her "I Can" book she wrote her numbers to 100 and her upper and lowercase letters in order.  Joanne is a really hard worker and I would like to thank her for working so hard!  Keep up the good work Joanne! 

Healthy Living

Within the last couple weeks, we have been learning about ways to take care of ourselves by ourselves.  We learned about the food groups and which foods are healthy for us.  Lately we have been learning about teeth.  We have been talking about what we can do to keep our teeth healthy for the rest of our lives.  This includes brushing, flossing, eating good foods, and going to the dentist!  Look for all of those activities to come home in the saddlebag tomorrow!  On this day we had an "experiment" from our science unit to go along with our books about healthy snacks.  We made and tried two healthy snacks then voted on them.   The first snack was the celery logs.  They looks like this!....

The next snack was our Apple Lips.  It was two apple slices with peanut butter in the middle and marshmellows that were the teeth.  This was also delicious!

Here were the results from our Healthy Snack Graph!

Our Last Super Achiever in November

Meet Claire.  She is a super achiever everyday!  She has been working very hard on everything we do but this week she was chosen because she is just a super friend.  We have been having issues with others telling others that they aren't going to be their friend.  Claire plays with anyone who asks and she also uses nice words like "I will play with you tomorrow."  if she has to!  Thank you Claire for being such a GREAT friend!

Thanksgiving Came and Went So Quick

I can't believe how fast this year has gone so far.  Thanksgiving has come and went.  On our last day before Thanksgiving we had songs shared with us from Mrs. Mortensen.  We had Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving in the shared area and we also had pumpkin bread and juice as a class.  For the occasion we made turkey hats which we wore to lunch! 

We had quite a few friends missing on this day.   We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and got to share a nice hearty meal with loved ones....or got to spend the day doing something you wanted!

Roll-A-Turkey

We did an activity before Thanksgiving called Roll-A-Turkey.  Each student had a partner and they had to roll their dice and draw what the number on the dice represented.  If you had already gotten that turkey part you had to wait your turn and try again.  It was a great activity to use counting and shapes.  The kiddos had a lot of fun also!

Ag in the Classroom

One afternoon we had Margo Sievers come into the classroom and she taught us about chickens.  The students really enjoyed her presentation!  Mrs. Sievers has been in education for awhile and is now retired.  She taught first grade in the school where I graduated from and I have enjoyed watching her teaching as well!

Since it was Dainy's birthday the next day he was automatically nominated to be our chicken.

What a HOOT!  We also got to do the chicken dance!  The kids really like doing that so now with the Cha Cha Slide we do the Chicken Dance :)

Letter Sound Charts

We have been working on finding letter sounds and letter combinations to help work on what sound each makes or what two letters can say together.  The kids really enjoy working on finding sounds in books and around the room.  It also helps with letter recognition, pronunciation of the sounds, and building confidence while reading! 

Keira found the word "the".  After they find the word and we try to sound it out, they write it on the board.  When we first started I wrote the words like this.

I have been encouraging these kiddos to find words at home and bring them in!  I hope that you are finding words at home!

Super Achiever David!

David came into our room and wouldn't talk to us.  We are  very excited now that he whispers in our ears and yells letters, sounds, numbers during group!  This week David was picked for Super Achiever because when we were writing last Tuesday he wrote an amazing sentence!  We are all working on becoming writers and authors and David is doing well!  He also comes to school with a smile and is ready to learn everyday!  Way to go David!!!  I am VERY proud of your accomplishments so far!  Keep up the good work!

An Afternoon with MetaBank!

On Friday we had Tracee come from MetaBank in Storm Lake.  Once a month she comes into our room to read a story to the students and to help us make a craft.  Tracee read A Turkey for Thanksgiving.  Afterward we made pattern headbands with turkey feathers!

Super Achiever Kristina

Kristina is our Super Achiever this week!  Kristina is working very hard to learn english, her letters and sounds along with her numbers!  She is doing an awesome job!  She also listens to directions very well!  Yesterday she was the only one to sit on the rug criss-cross applesauce while we had Mr. Brad Riechter come read to us.  She was very respectful and I am sooooo glad we have her in our class!   Congrats Kristina!!!!!!!

Skype

I got an email from a friend of mine from East Sac.  She teaches Spanish and her class was doing a project and they were skyping with kids and readig a story to them in English and Spanish.   The students really enjoyed seeing other students and seeing how our smart board can work!  Now all we need is a webcam and microphone so we can skype with others and read to them someday!

Thanks for reading Green Eggs and Ham to us!  We really enjoyed it :)

Farewell Ms. Hennessy!

We got the news on Thursday that Hennessy would officially be leaving us.  She is moving to Texas and we are going to miss her a lot!  We wanted to help celebrate with her.  She had brought in cupcakes, fruit snacks, and juice.   She also wanted to take pictures with us.  So here they are!

Of course we HAVE to be goofy :) 

To Miss Hennessy:  You are a wonderful girl and we hope that you show everyone in Texas what you can do!  Don't forget to check up on us!

We're All "Tied" Up!

For one of our math centers, we had a pre-made tie that Mrs. McAtee had drawn up.  The students' job was to write their numbers from 1-10 on the spots on the tie.  Then they had to color the dots in an ABC or AB pattern.  After that they cut it out and wrote their name on the back.  We are still working on that part of directions :)    We then put them on strings and wore them to Computer! 

November's First Super Acheiver!

Meet EhHserMuLar Soe.  This wonderful young lady is talented, bright, and very polite!  She always uses her good manner words such as "please" "thank you" and "your welcome".  She is also a very handy gal to have in class!  Congratulations EhHserMuLar!

Pumpkins Pumpkins Everywhere!

With our pumpkins from our pumpkin patch trip we got to carve it.  We had to take a vote on whether the pumpkin was going to be a girl or a boy pumpkin.  Then we had to vote on a name.  Here was the choices:  Sara, Erica, Darica, and Jack.  Sara was the name of our pumpkin and then we had to vote on how we were going to carve her.  The best part was cleaning out the pumpkin!

The next day we got to try pumpkin pie and pumpkin seeds!  What a hit :)

The Five Little Pumpkin poem will be coming home tomorrow! 

Our Real Fire Station Trip!

We had a lot of fun!  The kids were full of great questions and we got to see a lot of cool things!  I am glad that we finally got to go!