Winter Celebrations

Today we had our Winter Celebration. We did lots if fun crafts and had Chick fil A for lunch. We finished our day with our book exchange. We had a great day.

Season of Giving

Please don't forget to donate to our Seasons of Giving project. This year we are collecting toys for BEAM. Our box is located right inside the lobby door.

Diamond D Ranch

What a great field trip.  We had so much fun learning about animals, feeding them, taking a tractor ride, walking the trails, and even riding the horses.  Here are some highlights from the day.


Diamond D on PhotoPeach

Kevin Henkes Celebration

What a great day we had celebrating Kevin Henkes!  We enjoyed reading and discussing his books over the last  weeks.  The kids had a great time connecting with his characters. The day was full of fun crafts and activities.  

Kevin Henkes Celebration Day on PhotoPeach

It's Election Day

Today we too had an election in our class. Since we are first graders our students voted for characters from a book as opposed to the real election. There were 2 characters from 2 different books we read in class. Students could choose Duck from "Duck for President" or Grace from "Grace for President". Each student had a voters registration card, receives a ballot, and got a sticker that said "I voted"". Make sure you ask who your child voted for.

Thank You California Pizza!

Thank you to California Pizza and Donovan from our class. Donovan's aunt works at California pizza. The company chose to sponsor our classroom with a donation of supplies from Staples. Not only did we receive $250 worth of stuff for our classroom but were also treated to a pizza lunch. We are very thankful!

Happy Halloween!

What a fun day today. We wrote Halloween stories, made yummy marshmallow treats, and painted pumpkins. We hope everyone has a safe and happy Halloween.

What's Cooking at the 1st St. Cafe

Last week we had a great time cooking in class. Our last Book of the Month was a wonderful story about how two people met and learned how different their cultures were with food and eating. The young lady in the story was from Japan and ate with chop sticks. So we decided learn a little bit about the Japanese culture. We were lucky to have Ms. Nikki come and teach us Origami - that was great. Then we talked about where Japan is located. Finally we made rice and stir fry- it was yummy.

Our Parents Are Awesome!

WOW!  Thank you to all our parents who donated money to Donors Choose.  Our parents were able to finish fulfilling our proposal in just 1 day.  We are so excited and can't wait to receive our new seat sacks.  THANK YOU!

Donors Choose - It's All In the Bag

Can you feel it? It's autumn! Our class could really use help with supplies in order to finish off the school year strong. So we've created a classroom project request on a 501(c)3 charity website called DonorsChoose.org.

We are writing to ask for any donations possible for our students - no matter the size, it will help our kids. This week only, any donation you make to my project will be doubled! If you know anyone who is passionate about education, please pass this along. Your tax-deductible donation will have a direct impact on at least 36 students, and you'll hear back from our class about your impact on our learning!

To learn more or donate:
Visit our Teacher Page,
http://www.donorschoose.org/we-teach/238988
Choose the It's All In The Bag projects, enter the amount of your donation, and click "Give"
During check-out, enter the word PUMPKIN where it says "Match or gift code", and your donation will be matched dollar for dollar.
The PUMPKIN match code will double your donation until the end of the day on Monday, Ocotber 15. So exciting!

Please feel free to send us any questions you may have, and know that we all greatly appreciate your support.

Happy Fall!
Debbie Harbour & Tenean Wright

Welcome to First Grade

Welcome to our classroom blog.  For those of you that are new to our class we hope that you enjoy this look into our class.  Our goal is to provide you a peek into what happens on a daily basis as well as all the special things we do throughout the year.  

The first two weeks of school have been very busy as expected.  The benefit of looping a class is that we start the year full speed.  This year we are implementing our new Common Core Standards.  First grade is a busy year academically and you will be amazed at how much your child grows and learns.  Here are some highlights from our first two weeks:

Parent Appreciation Brunch

We would like to thank everyone who joined us for our Parent Appreciation Brunch this morning. We hope that you enjoyed their Readers' Theatre and songs. We are very proud of how hard they worked on these activities. They did a fantastic job. It was great to see so many of you there this morning. We look forward to seeing you at our end of the year celebration on June 4th so mark your calendars. Thank you!

A House for Hermit Crab

Today we read Eric Carle's A House for Hermit Crab. What a fun story about a crab who wants to make his new shell a little less boring. Lucky for us Mrs. Sambito and Ms. Thomas have a hermit crab in their classroom and allowed us to borrow him for the day. It was so exciting to watch him creep out and walk around. And just like the hermit crab in the story had a beautiful shell so does this one. :)

Kindergarteners Changing the World - Earth Day 2012

On Friday we celebrated Earth Day since it was on a Sunday this year. What a great day of discussions about our part to keep our Earth healthy. We read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and how the Lorax learned the hard way about taking care of our world. One thing we did was make paintings of the Earth. The kids loved this activity where we used marbles to color the world green and blue.

We also charted all the things we can do (even as kindergarteners)to save our planet. What great ideas they had! Here are some of their thoughts in writing.

Ask your child how he/she is going to change the world and save our planet!

Readers are Leaders

At Chets Creek we believe that READERS ARE LEADERS! To help celebrate our reading success, this nine weeks students were invited to the photobooth. Kids dressed up and took fun and silly pictures with their friends. Here are a couple highlights.

Boosterthon Fun Run 2012

What a great time we had with our Boosterthon Fun Run. Our kids ran 1070 laps! We had a class total pledge of $40 per lap which earned us lots of rewards. Our school pledged more than $95,000 from this one event. Our class will also receive 10% of the pledges received from our class that were turned in the first week. We are so proud of all your hard work. This was one of our best fundraisers I can remember. Thank you for all your support.

Spring Celebration

We had a great day for our Spring Celebration. We began with an egg hunt and then had lunch and crafts.