Thanks for a Great Year!

Dear families,

We had a wonderful last week together. This is a great group of kids and I will miss them next year!

Monday we had the whole school field day celebration. It was amazing. We designed some puzzle pieces, made a welcoming banner for next year's class, played kickball, made paper airplanes, colored with chalk, played with bubbles and hula hoops, raced on an inflatable bouncy-house style obstacle course, and played tons of yard games. It was so fun!

We finished making our first grade memory quilt this week. The students loved sharing their memories and representing them using their geometric knowledge and building skills.

We also thought back on our year together and wrote and drew pictures about our learning and memories in our class year book! There were some great class pictures in there too!

We read a few funny books this week: The Cat Who Wore a Pot on Her Head, Last Day Blues, My New Teacher and Me, and Little Critter: Just an Adventure at Sea.

We also did a lot of cleaning up the room and taking home projects and school work from the year. The students also helped to put back all the books we've read this year and make sure our classroom library bins are organized for next year!

On Wednesday afternoon we had one last 1st grade fun day where the first grade classes rotated through stations with each of the 1st grade teachers. They: danced with Ms. Johnson, made summer birthday cards with Mrs. Thompson, had snack and did some coloring with Mrs. Charron, and had freeze pops and colored with chalk with Mrs. Fox.

Friday was our last day of school. We had step-up day in the morning where the first graders visited their second grade classroom for next year. It was their first time gathering with their new classmates and teacher. They had a great time. Then we got to spend the rest of our short day together. We had one last celebration for filling our heart jar and enjoyed sharing time and favorite memories of the year.

I hope you all have a fantastic summer. Stop by and say hi at the back to school BBQ in August!

❤ Mrs. Fox

Big Blue Trunk!

Here are some photos from our day last week celebrating the hard work of all the first graders. We had so much fun playing with the toys and riding the train from the Big Blue Trunk!

Highlights of Our Penultimate Week!

Hello families,

This week whizzed by! We’ve been having a lot of fun wrapping up units and beginning a new project too!

This week we began our PBL geometric memory quilt project. We read Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. We also began to design our own representations of our first grade memories. This has been a very engaging activity thus far. It’s also been fun to reminisce about some of our favorite times together this year.

We also read last year’s class book “In First Grade…” to get ready to write our version of the book. Now these kids are the experts on first grade and will share their ideas of what to expect in first grade with the incoming class on step-up day next Friday.

We also did some fun writing this week. Students picked a book they’ve read and wrote about a character they know well. They put lots of details in about the character: who they are, what they like or dislike, what they say, and what they do.

We had our last assessment in word study. Our word study notebooks that we used a little bit this year were sent home on Thursday. The front pages we used for class practice. In the back are the assessments for the 7 units we covered this year.

On Thursday we had a super fun day! We played with the fun toys, got our faces painted, ran obstacle races, and of course enjoyed many train rides during our Big Blue Trunk play day! Afterwards we ate a pizza lunch, played a bit inside and watched “Finding Nemo.”

I will be out on Friday but Ms. Long will be in the spend the day as our guest teacher. Have a great weekend!

Please remember the All School Celebration is this Monday, June 11. Students should have:
-Sneakers
-Play clothes
-Sunscreen
-Hat
-Water bottle
-Please spray your child with bug spray before coming to school.

Dates to Remember:
Monday June 11 - All School Celebration: Field Day (sunscreen and hats recommended)
Wednesday June 13 - First Grade Fun Day 12:45-2:45 pm
Friday June 15 - Step-Up Day 8:45-9:15 am
Friday June 15 - Last Student Day - 11 am dismissal

❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of our Week

Hello families,

Can you believe there are only 2 weeks left of school? This past month just flew by!

We wrapped up our fiction narrative writing unit this week but will continue reading and studying the characters we meet in the fictions books we read during readers workshop. 

We began our final PBL (project based learning) this week. We introduced the topic of quilts as holders of memories. We read a few books already with this idea: My Two Blankets and The Keeping Quilt. We also watched an animated short, Oma's Quilt. Then we brainstormed what some of our favorite memories of first grade have been. In the next week we will be using our knowledge of shapes and geometry to represent our memories and make a paper quilt!

Officer Jason also visited the class to talk about summer safety: helmets, sidewalk rules, crosswalks, and water safety.

Earlier this week the first grade team sent home a letter about two upcoming outdoor celebrations at school. Here is that information again in case you need it!

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First grade has two fun OUTDOOR events coming up in the next 2 weeks!

The PTO sponsored end of the year field trip is actually right at JFK! We have the Big Blue Trunk coming on Thursday,  June 7th. This is an outdoor event where the kids will be playing with a variety of cool things. It is from 9:00-11:00. We can have chaperones for this event. If you want to come, be ready and dressed to play outside. We can not have any additional family members join us as is school policy. We have a special lunch (pizza from Costco, drinks, and chips) for the the students at 11:00, sorry, this does not include our chaperones. Students should have:

• Sneakers
• Play clothes
• Sunscreen
• Hat
• Water bottle
• Please spray your child with bug spray before coming to school.

The second fun day is the All School Celebration. This is on Monday, June 11. Students should have:

• Sneakers
• Play clothes
• Sunscreen
• Hat
• Water bottle
• Please spray your child with bug spray before coming to school.

Let’s hope for great weather! Please let us know if you are planning to come in and be a chaperone for our Big Blue Trunk day.

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Dates to Remember:
Thursday June 7 - 1st Grade End of Year Celebration: Big Blue Trunk (sunscreen and hats recommended) 9:00-11:00 am
Monday June 11 - All School Celebration: Field Day (sunscreen and hats recommended)
Wednesday June 13 - First Grade Fun Day 12:45-2:45 pm
Friday June 15 - Last Student Day - 11 am dismissal

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox