If it smells a little like you're dropping your child off at the pool rather than our classroom on Monday morning, it's no accident. We're approaching that time of year when germs like to make themselves at home everywhere and spread havoc. Your child may have told you that my voice sounded like a frog recently. My family was hit pretty hard the past two weeks with that 6-day fever business. I've been washing my hands to the bone to stop the spread to your little ones. This weekend I disinfected every surface in the room. In the meantime, we can thank God for our bodies' amazing immune systems and continued health. Three cheers for spring time!!! :D

Saturday morning scrub down!

We've been continuing to be weather watchers in our classroom. We've tracked the wind direction with our not-so-high-tech wind vanes. It's been fun to watch all the crazy weather and critical temperatures God has been sending our way. Such great experiential learning.

Your child has selected an animal this week to create an "All About" book. We'll delve further into research next week. Feel free to access any resources you may have at home to help bolster your child's knowledge of his or her animal. Better yet, ask your child to teach you a bit about the animal he has become an expert in.

Fraction review project "3/4 of us are wearing white."

"2/2 of us have teeth." :D

"2/3 of us are girls."

"3/4 of us are wearing blue."

A few important dates:

Tuesday, February 26--Skating Party! 6:00-8:00  Shoot the Duck! Remember that one?
Wednesday, February 27--Neighborhood Blessing. We'll share baked goodies, songs and our memory work with two shut-in women in our neighborhood. May we bless and be blessed.
Tuesday, March 5--Dutch Costume Sale. Our students will be walking in the Tulip Time parade this year! If your child needs a dutch costume, this is a GREAT place to pick one up. See the South Side Newsletter for more details.
Friday, March 15 5:30-8:00--Fun Night at Pine Ridge
Wednesday, March 27--Reading Carnival

A call for help:
South Side will hold our annual Reading Carnival on Wednesday, March 27th in the morning. One of our games involves popcorn. We are hoping for a volunteer to pop two brown paper grocery bags of unseasoned popcorn for this game. If you have a hot air popper and wouldn't mind giving it a workout, would you please let me know? Thank you in advance! Otherwise, to pull the activities off successfully, we need extra hands throughout the building that morning from 8:15-10:30. If you are willing and able to volunteer that morning, please let me know. Thank you!

From the bottom of my heart to the top of my head, I thank every single one of you. What a beautiful, memorable birthday gift your children gave me today. They were SO excited. I was moved to tears. Look at this breathtaking gift they were so proud to give

When I hold this gift and examine each little finger print, I can't help but feel this reflects how my heart feels. Each little finger print, so uniquely and beautifully created by God, has been imprinted on my heart. How humbling that God has given me the opportunity to understand the workings of each tender individual, work together toward development and watch as God allows each one to blossom into His beautiful new creation. Truly, I thank you for allowing me into your child's life. They have made this birthday one of my most special days.

Speaking of love, we had a fun-filled Valentine's Day party! When did Valentine's Day start packing on the candy mountain that rivals Halloween?!? Next year, I'll try to pass out apple slices (I'm not sure I'll have a lot of takers :)

Sharing some 'big-kid' love with our preschool buddies.

A few important dates:

Monday, February 18-No School: Winter Break

Tuesday, February 26-Skating Party 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Friday, March 8-No School: Staff Learning Day

100 days! Can you believe your little one has completed 100 days of first grade? I really don't like to think too long about this because, inevitably, time marches on. I know that we will not celebrate our 200th day together. The closer we get to the end of this year, I know I'll be losing sleep about these 23 precious little people moving on. God has gifted them with so much, they bless me DEEPLY (more than they can know). Every day I see such hard work, laughter, joy, growth (yes, a few "buddy breaks" sprinkled here and there, but, that's just part of our growth :) I'm hooked. You child will permanently have a piece of my heart wherever God plans to lead him or her.

Our hundredth day was spent counting to 100 in more ways than I thought possible!

If only you could "hear" this picture. There was a low murmur throughout the room as everyone was counting 1, 2, 3...

100 pieces took a lot of scoops :D

Sorted, counted and ready to munch!

Speaking of hearts, we have Valentine's Day coming up! This Thursday, the 14th, your child may bring special Valentine cards for each child in class. We'll make little mailboxes to collect the special notes. Here are our the children's names in case the class list walked away in the past 7 months:

Alden
Abby B.
Nick
Lillian
Lauren
Meta
Makenna
Cooper
Parker
Luke
Ellie
Annabel
Eric
Molly
Eden
Taryn
Nathaniel
Jorden
Gavin
Isaac
Joseph
Abby V.
Tara

You may send the notes to school on the 14th.

We will be concluding our mini-unit on "how to" papers this Wednesday. Thank you for our huge supply of buckets. We had a great time building our ice castle (though I'm pretty sure Lamar Construction won't be calling me as a summertime foreman!) I had envisioned a castle the children could walk right inside. Maybe it was a little smaller than I had expected because about half the castle was eaten away by our little snow munchers :) We sure had a great time outdoors on a beautiful day. It gave us an important common experience with which we could draw upon for our how-to papers.

We checked our papers for clarification by pantomiming each other's work.

How-to papers are fun to listen to!

In Social Studies, we're being introduced to one continent each week. While learning a bit about North America, we made HAMBURGERS (ours were made out of cookies and frosting). We had a lot of enthusiastic takers!

A few important dates:
Thursday, February 14-Valentine party at school
Friday, February 15-We'll be meeting with our preschool buddies again for a little post-Valentine fun!
Monday, February 18-Winter Break
Tuesday, February 26-Skating Party!!!

So, God is certainly having a lot of fun with us in our study of weather!

A few of our rain gauges waiting for collection. It'll be fun to compare inches of snow before and after melting.

Freezing rain, sleet, thunder storms, freezing point, snow, wind chill, lake effect snow...we're getting it all. THANK YOU for all of the buckets that you sent to school with your child. We filled them with water on Thursday afternoon. They're all sitting on the north side of school waiting for an ambitious group of first grade builders. Some of the building plans I've overheard have us rivaling the Crystal Cathedral. I can't wait to see what we create!

Along with our writing project, our "Crystal Cathedral" will offer a nice review of our three-dimensional shapes and allow the children to discover which shapes lend themselves to construction projects better than others.

I'm thrilled with how the children are not only understanding the fractions that we are studying in math, they are also applying this knowledge to their lives. I've heard children trading "half their snack" or reading "1/3 of their book already". Awesome! Feel free to use fractions in your conversations at home as well to help expand this new knowledge.

We're reading about God's infinite patience with His people as we study the pattern of the Israelites living in Canaan. We'll learn the stories about the prophets God sent to redirect His people. How often don't we need that same forgiveness and patience from our loving Father.

For the next month, we'll be hopping around the world focusing on an introduction to each continent. Our study this week (brief though it was) was of North America. Your child did a little sightseeing on his/her iPad. I had many suggestions for our class to take a field trip to the Statue of Liberty so we could peek out of the window of her crown. There's a bus ride for ya! Any takers? (kidding of course :)

Peer editing!

A few important dates next week:
Monday the last reading incentive slip is due.

Wednesday will be our last Wacky Wednesday day. Your child may dress up in mismatch clothes, from shoes and socks to hair accessories. Feel free to get a little wacky!

Friday we will celebrate our 100th day of school (WHAT?!?!) We're going to make a class trail mix together. Please be on the lookout for a note coming home on Monday requesting a bag of 100 favorite snack pieces such as: raisins, goldfish (or some such salty creature) crackers, pretzels, tiny cheese chunks, etc. We'll toss them all in a bag and count out 100 of the new mix.

February 18-winter break

February 26-our school skating party is scheduled.