Life in First Grade
Laura Phillips • February 5, 2020
Balloon Project
Hello Everyone
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We hope you all had a GREAT winter break. We are happy to be back in class. First grade has been working hard in January. We celebrated our 100th day of school. We are working on the first story of our fourth reading unit. This school year is flying by. We are all working hard to reach our goals for AR quizzes. First graders ARE SMITTEN with books. Our top AR reader in January is Rowan. Keep up the good work First Grade.
We are looking forward to February; we will be doing a “Tell me something good” project for Valentine’s Day. We will write a nice comment about each student in the class on hearts. The ground hog did not see his shadow so we hope we can start enjoying the warmer weather of spring. We had a great time doing an experiment to see if we could blow up a balloon inside a bottle. Thank you to Mrs. Flanary and everyone else who helped us conduct our experiment. Do you think you can do it? Give it a try! Well that is all the news for now. Have a Wonderful February!
Congratulations to all girls who tried out for both squads! The 2020-2021 Junior Varsity Squad members: Tyane Anthony Abigail Brooks Talley Carter Kayla Howard Halle Hurst Gabby Lamb Baeda McClellan Sarah McClellan Jordan Miles Meleah Tigner The 2020-2021 Varsity Squad Members: Bailey Allen Claire Allen Jamie Clark Lindsey Fuller Kaylyn Keebler Natalie Lovelace Audrey Miller Abbie Morgan Kamdyn Oliver Mattie Reese Brandalon Rombokas Alyssa Sorrells Kendall Talbot
Media Mentions Our Book Fair is March 9-13. We look forward to visiting the “jungle” to search for some great books! February top readers are as follows: Kindergarten: Allison McElvy and Phoebe Benson (11 points) 1st Grade: Rowan Benson (21 points) 2nd Grade: Yates Lashley (20 points) 3rd Grade: Layton Caldwell (22 points) 4th Grade: William Lashley (29 points) 5th Grade: Beth Landrum (10 points) These students will enjoy lunch off campus!
My seventh grade science class has been doing some labs this week. We grew bacteria that was collected from different items in an incubator. They got to see how much bacteria is lurking and what it actually looks like. They compared bacteria and fungus. They also used the scientific method in performing this experiment and discussed independent and dependent variables. This was a nice break from note taking!!!
In the month of February, our students ‘love’ learning about new events in history. The 9th graders are finishing learning about World War 1 and begin to study the roaring 20s and World War 2. The 10th graders are finalizing their studies of the Civil War and succession of the states. The 11th graders are moving into World War 2 and our 12th graders have moved into economics and politics. The speech class is writing speeches on important figures from the 1920s! We can not wait to see what spring has in store!
January was a busy time in 4th Grade! In Reading, we read stories about puzzles and mysteries. We focused on literary elements and plot/theme. In Alabama History, we started discussing Alabama’s Early Statehood – specifically the first 5 capitals. In Science, we talked about Earth’s Changes like erosion. We did our first Weird Science Wednesday and completed an Ice Castle STEM Challenge. WOW – it is hard to believe how quickly the year is passing! Our great year continues!
January has been a busy month in the library! We’ve gotten back in the groove after the break, and we’ve enjoyed making books of our own, and performing Readers Theater scripts! Our Spring Book Fair is coming up! It will be held during the week of March 9-13. We will be open from 7:30-2:30 Monday-Thursday, and 7:30-11:00 on Friday. “ Finger Foods with Families ” will be held Monday morning from 7:30-8:00. Please come and join us for shopping and snacks. Grandparent luncheons will be held on Tuesday, March 10 for grades K-3, and Wednesday, March 11 for grades 4-6. More information will come home with students soon. Top AR readers for this month are: K: Phoebe Benson- 10 points 1st: Rowan Benson- 30.3 points 2nd: Yates Lashley- 34.4 points 3rd: Layton Caldwell- 18.3 points 4th: Eben Sasser- 14.4 points 5th: Beth Landrum- 36.5 points 6th: Easton Janowiecki- 18 points Congratulations to these students!
The second graders are learning a new way to write ----- cursive! Cohen had a tooth pulled and has now joined our Tooth Club. We have 6 members now! Harleen guessed the closest number of triangles in the Triangle Tree! She guessed 32. The first week after Christmas break was “Frog and Toad Week!” We listened to 4 books about two very good friends, wrote about our favorite Frog and Toad story, and practiced letter writing by writing 3 Frog and Toad letters. We read “A Lost Button” and did an activity with that story with K-5. We continued our letter writing the next week by writing 2 letters to our classmates and mailing them via Class Mail. After reading “Flat Stanley,” we mailed Flat Fred/Freida letters to someone who does not live with us! After visiting for a week, they wrote back telling us what Flat Fred/Freida did and saw. We are sharing our letters with our classmates as soon as the letters come in. January 27th was our 100th Day of School! We celebrated with activities, refreshments, and goody bags! Many thanks to Mrs. Dianne Lee for baking our cake. We ate every bit of it! For several years, Lowe’s Pharmacy has blown up 100 balloons for us! The children enjoyed weaving through all the ribbons in our hallway!
Our elementary grades celebrated 100 days of school earlier this week! They each had special activities throughout the day as well as end it with some celebration and cake!
We have had a great month! The students are making great progress learning sight words and sounding out simple words. We made Christmas ornaments and decorated our tree.
First grade is having a busy month during December. We helped old Tom Turkey make it past Thanksgiving with our clever disguises. We sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for our Christmas program. We visited the Valley Merry Go Round and had a great lunch at Dairy Queen. All of our students are enjoying Counselor's Christmas this week. We will already be half way through our third reading unit on Friday. We are sharing our All about Me posters and each week a student will be featured on our bulletin board in the hall. What a great way to end the month! The top AR reader in November was Rowan. There is not much time in December so we are really excited to see who our top AR reader for December will be! We are excited about reading our 6 hours so that we can earn our Six Flags tickets. Do not forget to time your child as they read at home and log those times on SixFlags.com. They can read anything except our weekly story for credit. Soon we will be on Christmas break. This year has really flown by. I pray that each of you has a joyous holiday season. Thanks for all you do to make sure your student is successful. They truly are a blessing to teach. Looking forward to a fantastic New Year. See you all in January.
