December Reminders

Today your child brought home our December Scholastic Book Order. It is due on Friday, December 5th. I would like to place the order at the end of this week to guarantee that we get our order before we have our winter break. If you are ordering books as a gift, please let me know and I will hold them for you. Remember you can order online and pay with your credit card. When you order online you have more catalogs to look at. To order online go to www.scholastic.com and select reading clubs. You will need to register online and use our class code so that your order comes to me. Our code is GQGDB.

Our class will be shopping at the Holiday Workshop on Wednesday at 9:45. If you would like your child to make purchases at the store please send them with money on Wednesday morning. Please remind your child to hand me the money when they come in so that I can hold onto it for them. I would appreciate it if the money comes in a labeled envelope.

We are going to me making our Gingerbread Houses on Monday, December 22nd at 2:00. The snow date is Tuesday, December 23rd at 2:00. Letters will be going home this week with the day, time, and what I would like to you to send in for the project.

We will be having Grinch Day on Tuesday, December 23rd. We are going to spend the day doing literacy and math activities based on the story How the Grinch Stole Christmas. If your child would like they can wear green. A reminder about this will be coming home later this month.





 

November Recap

November has been a very busy month in Room 107. At math time we focused on addition to 10. We are getting really fast with our math facts. Please continue to practice your facts at home. This coming week we will move our attention to subtraction. At literacy we have been reading stories from around the world. We read three versions of Little Red Riding Hood and three versions of Tom Thumb. This gave us a chance to learn about maps and where we live in the world. It was really fun when Ms. Feuerstack used Google Maps to find our school. We got to see our classroom window and the playground. As part of writer's workshop we have been working on adding detail to both our pictures and our writing.  We are trying to write more than two sentences on a topic.


   


  

It was so nice meeting so many parents at parent teacher conferences. I am so happy with all of the progress that our class has been making these past few months. I also want to send a big thank you to all of the parents that were able to contribute to our Thanksgiving Feast to help make it a big success.

 Be on the lookout in your child's folder for information on Gingerbread Houses coming home this week. We will be making them on December 22nd at 2:00.

We have a great new website that your child can be using to practice math and literacy at home. It is called Moby Max. You can access it at home at www.mobymax.com. You will then type Circleville to find our school and then log in using your child's lunch number for both their user name and password.

The Human Body

This month our class has been very focused on learning about our human bodies. I hope they have been coming home and sharing thier new learning with you. We began our study by learning about our skeletal system. Did you know that we have 206 bones in our body? We were lucky enough to have a special vistitor come and join our class to help us learn about our skeleton. Mrs. Bones was a wonderful guest. She helped us to understand what our bones help us do.

After learning about our skeleton we learned about our muscular system. We have 650 muscles in our body. We were excited to learn about our largest muscle, the gluteus maximus. If you are not sure what that is ask your child.

Next up came our digestive system. This led to some very interesting first grade conversations. Of course we had lots of stories to share along with a lot of ewwws! Ms. Feuerstack helped us to understand this system by wearing a very special suit.

Ater our digestive system we moved on to our circulatory and nervous systems.  This week we will wrap up our learning by learning how to keep healthy.

Don't forget you are all invited to come and help us make Q-tip skeletons on Friday, October 24th at 2:15. I hope to see  you there.
Below you will see some examples of last years skeletons.

15 Days Under Our Belt

Today was our 15th day of first grade. We have been very busy reviewing things we learned last year in Kindergarten and we have been busy practicing our first grade rules and procedures. We have built up our Daily Five stamina and we now have 3 choices. We Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone. We have built up enough stamina that Ms. Feuerstack began calling guided reading groups this week. We are working really hard on being independent so that we do not interrupt our friends while they are learning.

In honor of the first day of fall we wrote about what we like to do in the fall and then we did a torn art project. It was a lot of fun to rip up construction paper to create a fall tree. Make sure you check out our project when you visit our class on September 30th for Open House.

Classroom Tour

Here is a glimpse of our classroom for the 2014-2015 school year.

Here is a picture of our classroom door. Below you will see the view from our door. 

One of my favorite parts of our classroom is our library. Students are learning how to select good fit books from our library. This is where I will also be meeting with my reading groups.

Another important part of our classroom is our whole group carpet area. This is where we do most of our learning. In this area we have our SMART Board, Ladibug, and CAFE Menu.

In our classroom we use a clip chart to monitor our behavior it is located near Ms. Feuerstack's desk.

I hope you enjoyed some pictures of our classroom. More pictures for our room will be coming soon.

Our First Day

       We had a great first day of school. We spent the day getting to know each other and listening to some fun first day of school books. 
      
      
We also began Daily Five, this is how we organize our literacy block. Today we began Read to Self. This is where we independently read self selected books. I will be posting more about this shortly. We also worked on learning our rules and classroom procedures. Below you will find a few pictures from our classroom. A full tour is coming soon.

Our Special Schedule

Our school runs on a day 1-5 schedule for our specials. Below you will find our schedule for the 2014-2015 school year. Please make sure that your child wears sneakers on P.E. days. Your child will also need an art smock labeled with their name.

Day 1 - P.E. 10:15-11:00

Day 2 - Music 10:35-11:05

Day 3 - Art 10:15-11:00

             Library 1:50-2:20

Day 4 - P.E. 10:15-11:00

Day 5 - Music 10:35-11:05

Lunch and Recess 12:30-1:15

We have snack break every morning. Please send your child in with a small snack. You may also want to send your child in with a water bottle to keep at their desk.

Meet Your Teacher

Dear First Grade Friends,

My name is Ms. Feuerstack and I am so excited that I will be your teacher this year. This is my 13th year teaching at Circleville Elementary School. I taught third and fourth grade before becoming a first grade teacher. I have actually taught some of your brothers and sisters. We are going to have a lot of fun this year learning together. I had a wonderful summer spending time with my family and I hope you had a fun summer as well. Here a few things about your new teacher.

1. I have 3 nephews who keep me very busy. 

2. I like to go shopping, especially at Target. I also love Dunkin' Donuts.

3. I have a very chubby cat named Hunter. 

4. I like going to the beach. My family spent a week at Myrtle Beach this summer.

5. I love cooking and watching the Food Network.

I can't wait to meet you on September 3rd for the first day of first grade. Check back often to find out what we are up to in our classroom. Pictures of our classroom will be posted soon. 

Please feel to contact me at any time with any questions or concerns. I can be reached at (845)744-2031 ext. 5500 or by e-mail at bfeuerstack@pinebushschools.org.