Gingerbread Houses

On Thursday, our class made gingerbread houses! The excitement had been building for several weeks as we collected ice cream buckets, frosting, and supplies for decorating. Finally, the big day arrived, everything was ready, and it was time to begin! Each child had to invite one guest as a helper. We had grandparents, moms, dads, aunts, and friends join us as we created our houses.

The first step was to frost a foil-covered lid as a base for the house.
Then, we frosted an empty milk carton for the house.
Then, we stuck graham crackers to the cartons.

Frosting makes great glue, and it tastes good, too.

Finally, the decorating began!

The kids were very creative with all the gum drops, M&Ms, licorice, cereal, teddy grahams, etc.

Mmmmmm - the frosting was finger-licking good!

Frosting the ice cream cone trees was kind of tricky.

Kind of hard to resist a little snacking!

Colored sugar, coconut, and sprinkles added extra color.

All done!

Looks good!

Here are a few finished projects:

This one even has a sleigh!

Hopefully, all of the houses made it home in one piece!

Thanks, parents, for all of your help with this project!

Happy Holidays, and remember to have your kids read lots during vacation!

November Students of the Month

Congratulations to last month's award winners -

Vienna, Will, and Jack!

Keep up the good work, kids.

Ah-Choo!

The cold and flu season has arrived!

We have been working all week on a Handwashing Unit, and the kids have been introduced to Velma Virus, Jasper Germ, and Baxter Bacteria, a gang of germs on a mission to make kids sick. We learned that the germs hate the Mean Clean Handwashing Machine (soap), and we did several experiments to show that to kill germs on our hands, we need soap, warm water, and lots of scrubbing. If you hear the kids singing the ABC's while they are washing, they are just following Nurse Julie's suggestion to scrub for as long as it takes to sing the whole song.

We made sneeze pictures to remind everyone to use tissues and cover mouths when we cough. We talked about lots of tips for staying healthy all winter.
The most important one is to wash, wash, wash!
Dressing warmly, getting lots of sleep, and using tissues are also essential.
I once heard first graders called "little glazed doughnuts" because of their drippy noses and difficulty with tissues, and on some days, that's a very good description! Please help your children practice healthy habits, and we will all have a much healthier winter!

Diorama Day

Diorama Day was a huge success! The kids (and their families) did a great job designing and sharing dioramas of the forest, wetlands, ocean, and desert. The ocean seemed to be the favorite habitat. The dioramas will be on display in the 1-3 Commons area through the first week of December, so stop by and see them! Thanks for all of your help!

We put our dioramas on our desks, and all the first graders came by to see what we did. Then we got to go to the other classes to see theirs, too.

4th Grade Buddies

The main job of first graders is to learn to read, and I tell them almost every day, "The more you read, the better you read." To give them more practice reading to an audience, we get together several times a month with our 4th grade buddies. We do writing projects, listen to stories, and read, read, read!

Some of us go out into the Commons so our room isn't quite so crowded (and noisy), with 20 kids reading to their buddies at the same time.

The 4th graders are really good listeners!

They also help if we get stuck on a word.

Our anthology has really good stories to share.

This story is about a trip to an aquarium.

It has great photographs of interesting fish.

Some stories are make-believe, like this one about some mice visiting an art museum.

This story is about some animals who make a huge mess at Miss Jill's Ice Cream Shop.

This story is about eating ham and eggs.

Sometimes we have time to chat a little, too.

We learned lots of facts about fish.

This story is about the four seasons.

It helps to point at the words as we read.

The pictures help, too, when we are reading new words.

This story is a folk tale written in play form.

It takes lots of concentration to read!

Thanks, 4th graders, for helping us!