Winter Fun

We had a GREAT time at our winter party. We made reindeer or bunny food, had a yummy snack plate of cheese, fruit, pretzels and cookies, decorated snowflake ornaments and played a Minute to Win It snowball toss game. Thank you to our a-maz-ing room moms for organizing all of this ... and I mean organizing! They had everything so well prepared, we were able to fit it all in to our party hour! Happy Holidays, everyone!

Holiday Fun

Our creativity came through in art today when some friends made Rudolph noses from leftover scraps. Check out our Santa. He created his own beard. How cute is he?!

While doing our Holidays Around the World rotations we opened Christmas crackers when we learned about England. It took a lot of strength to get those open!

Spirit Day

Hannah and Nick were recognized during our October Spirit Day for their citizenship as our character award winners. We had a visit from some of the high school football players and cheerleaders. First grade won the Box Top trophy and we got to see Mrs. O'Neill and Mr. Hilton dressed as hot dogs and covered in ketchup and mustard for meeting our fundraiser goal!

Word Work

As part of our word work to reinforce strong spelling skills, we use word sorts. Students sort a group of words by "family" or pattern. We work with the words over the period of a few days so that students have time to become familiar with the pattern and will be more likely to apply it in their own independent spelling. The sorts are differentiated so that the students can work on the spelling patterns most appropriate for their level of spelling development. One of our favorite activities with the word sort is to do a "Blind Sort" with a partner. Each sort category has a heading, which is laid out for both partners to see. One partner reads the word to the other partner (without showing them the word -- thus the "blind" part) who has to point to which group it should go in. This can get pretty tricky when you start having multiple patterns for one vowel sound. Visual learners are usually really good at this!

Veterans Day

Our Veterans Day ceremony was so moving again this year. Each veteran introduced himself or herself and told where and when they served. We were fortunate to have two of our families represented at the ceremony with Nick and Abbigail's grandfathers among those honored.

Many thanks to all who have served or are currently serving our country!

Red Ribbon Week

During Red Ribbon Week we had a visit from the K-9 Unit of the Coppell Police Department. It was interesting to hear how the dogs live with the officers and know how to "turn on" their police behavior, but behave like regular family pets at home.