Please Read: Update On School From Home

Hi Families! 

 Well, I never thought this would be an email I'm writing. As we enter these few weeks of working from home I want to remind you of a few resources that I sent home on Friday with your chilld. Each child has a bag of books that were chosen with them to be reading and practicing some skills in! There was a packet sent home with a letter from me on top and some additional resources within it. These bingo sheets are to provide your child with some options at home to keep engaging in their learning. I want you to know that none of this is required by the school but we highly recommend keeping your child enaged and practicing their math facts and any form or writing or reading. 

I sent home wonder journals for students to continue writing in. These are a great resource for students to go back and edit their own writing or to make new entries. I encourage you to have our child write for atleast 20 minutes a day- we usualy write for an ahour! This can be as simple as them summarizing a movie they watched or making a journal about what they did to stretch their brain that day. I encourage you to set up a schedule for your child each day. On index cards write out different ideas for them to work on or practice or to break up their day and have them arrange it to work through their day independently. I will be making a tutorial video on this and think they would love it- if you want to have them try it out, I think it would be a great and easy way to start with some structure! 

In addition to this, I will be making a Youtube channel to stay connected with the kids! I know they love youtubers and if I can stay connected with them through that and have them work on some extra things at home, I am excited to try! This could range from a check-in,  a mini lesson, or a challenge for them to try. If I'm being completely honest, I have NO idea where to start with this. I will be working to set this up today and will be positing daily links to the blog! Please help your child check the blog daily so they can see these videos! 

I am hoping to create a facetiming schedule with the students. I know this would require an apple device or the use of an iphone and I am hopingto get your thoughts on this. It is a lot to coordinate for 18 schedules but I would love to have one on one conversations with your child to talk about personal goals and picking up where we left off at school, at home. If you are interested in working with me to create a schedule, please email me! This is not required but it is a way that I could individually connect with students and maintain the growth that we were seeing. 

Lastly, I wanted to remind you that there are links on the side of this blog page that are fun resources for students to explore. I also wanted to suggest some differnt apps that you can download or purchase to engage student learning.

Chalkboard Math- Math facts

Sushi Monster- Math facts (crowd favorite)

Moose Math- Math facts

Number Rack- Organizing and sorting numbers

Science360- Science videos

PBSkids

PhonicsNinja- work work

PhonicsGenius- Phonics practice

I will be looking for more apps as well to send a long, the students can probably name their favorties from our math app section of the ipads as well!

I have changed my daily office hour from 9:00am-10:00am daily!

Stay healthy and please let your dragonfly know that I miss them SO much!

Field Trip to The Music Hall 🎼

The first grade will be seeing The Pout Pout Fish at the Portsmouth Music Hall on March 25th. We will be leaving school at 10:45 and returning at 1:15. We will eat a late snack to help prepare us for our later lunch that day. If you want your child to order a bag lunch for this day- there is still time. Pleae email me to let me know that they would like to order and I will ask them what type of lunch they want! Thank you for sending in permisssion slips! We are super excited for this trip! 

First Grade Market Reminder- Tomorrow!

Hi Families!

Tomorrow we are opening our doors at 8:30 for the first grade market. We hope you can make it! Every item that the first graders have created for you to purchase is 1 dollar. We encourage you to bring one dollar bills instead of coins! We are so excited to have you and we hope you can make it for a little light shopping. Siblings are also welcome! There is more information in my previous post titled "Welcome Back"! All of our money raised will go to support the animals who have been injured or lost their habitat in the Australia fires. We hope to see you there and if not, I will snap a lot of pictures!

🐨💵

Valentine's Day❤️😍

Valentine's Day

Hi families! We will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Friday the 14th as a classroom family. Please send your child to school with valentines to give to each member of their class for this day. Valentines should be at school by Thursday the 13th. If you aren't able to grab some valentines for your dragonfly, let me know and I can make sure they have some for that day! Here is a class list for your child as they fill out their valentines! 

Autumn

Owen

Addison

Jack

Addy

Stella

Miley

Connor 

Gunnar

Eli

Vincenza

Logan

Alex

Colin

Vyshnavi

Jocelyn

Julien

Have a wonderful week! 

Global Play Day🌎

Hi Families! 

This coming Wednesday is Global Play Day. We will be participating in the morning of 2/5. We will use this time to play and to continue creating for the market! Students are able to bring in toys from home if they wish! We want to encourage you to only send in toys that require imagination. We will not be using technology. Although our class is very lucky to be participating in this global day, not all of the SMS classrooms are choosing to partake. Many classrooms will be playing in March. We wated to do this on the actual day along with our buddy classes. Students can wear comfortable clothing or pjs if they wish! 

Our First Grade Market to save the koalas in Australia is the following day 2/6. We are so excited to have you join us, don't forget to bring your one dollar bills!

Welcome Back!

Hi Families! 

 I hope you had a great long weekend. It's been so great getting back to school and continuing our learning this morning. The dragonflies have been blowing me away with their deep thinking and risk taking! It is so evident that we are heading into our second half of first grade! We have some very exciting times ahead and I wanted to first give you some reminders for some events in the near future. 

Our field trip to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center is this Thursday, January 23rd. If you are chaperoning please meet us in Concord at 10:00! If you marked that your child needed a bag lunch on the permission slip form, they are all set! Please pack a lunch for your child if you did not mark that they needed one on the permission slip. We are very excited for this trip and love making memories like this together! 

We have a "Save the Koalas" first grade market happening February 6th at 8:30am. This is a time for you to come into our classroom and make purchases (everything is 1 dollar each) of some finely made hand goods- ofcourse created by the dragonflies! We will be donating all that we make in our market to help the Koalas who are trying to survive in fire-ravaged Australia. Last year first graders raised $2,300 for the Georgie Badiel Foundation that helps provide clean water to people in need. We are so excited to give back and make a difference in our world. We would love for you to join us on this day and purchase our goods! Other donations are also welcome! 

Report Cards will be coming home this coming Monday. Report cards will look different from last year's and are much more informative! We are excited to launch these report cards electronically and I can't wait to share with you the growth I have seen in all of these amazing learners. As always, when something is new, we are working hard to learn this new system and are very excited to have a new way to report out to you all that is going on in our learning! 

I hope your week is off to a great week like ours! 😁

UPCOMING FIELD TRIP

Hi Families

We have a field trip coming up! Just like our previous field trip, please look over the field trip permission slip and send in a payment reflecting if it will be just your child joinging us or if you will be joining us as well as a chaperone! We would love to have you if you can make it but also understand that it is an extremely busy time of year. Our trip is at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center! This permission slip should be returned by this Friday the 10th. Please write an extra little note on the permission slip if you'd like your child to order a bag lunch for that day and I will connect with your child on what they'd like to eat! 😁

Happy 2020!

Hello Families! 

I'd first like to thank you informally for the amazing class holiday gift and for making me feel so special this holiday season. It has been the best teaching your little ones and getting to know your families. I have notes for each one of you coming home in blue folders tomorrow. Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

Tomorrow we will be going outside for our buddy time with the Seals and the Owls! We will be building in the snow so please make sure your dragonfly has their snow gear and boots! 

I wanted to post some photos of our days before break! Along with taking on some very sophisticated learning (as you saw at our "Meet the Author") we had so much fun together! I hope you enjoyed seeing all of the work and crafts that were taken home as well! We sure have been busy! I can't wait to get back in the swing of things with these amazing learners tomorrow!