February = Lots of Fun in First Grade!

Wow! I never realized how much fun I missed out on as a 4th grade and 7th grade teacher! Last week we celebrated our 100th day of school and Valentine's Day. This week, the students are excitedly researching U.S. Presidents in honor of President's Day. Next week, we kick off our celebration of Dr.  Suess with Literacy Night. All of these things seem to be much bigger deals to my little 6- and 7-year olds. While I would sneak in some fun with my older students, February meant that our Terra Nova testing was right around the corner, and I think that put a damper on some events. So, I am trying to enjoy every last minute of pure JOY that I get to see in my students' eyes on these wild and crazy days!

I don't have a camera in my classroom this year, and I keep forgetting to grab my phone or camera when we are doing awesome stuff. I promise we have had some educational and fun days :) For the 100th day, we enjoyed a healthy snack thanks to an idea from Pinterest. Students had a baby carrot (for the 1 in the hundreds place) and two slices of cucumber (for our 0 tens and 0 ones). I have never seen children so excited to eat veggies! They loved it! We also spent time building structures out of 100 plastic cups, decorating silly hats with 100 stamps, pictures, words, etc., writing about what we would do with $100, and making art out of the digits of 100 (another awesome Pinterest find).

On Valentine's Day, we tried to keep it mellow. I introduced some fun Valentine's Day math centers in the morning. My wonderful student teacher led a fun art and writing activity. Students created "pop art" hearts, and we used those as the covers of our Valentine's Day cards. Students practiced their letter writing skills inside the card. Then, we enjoyed some treats and passed out Valentines in the afternoon.

I am excited to see how anxious the students are to do research to learn about new things. The President research activity has been a favorite! I will share pictures of these once they are finished. I am sure I will have a lot of great stories to share over the coming weeks.