Taking a Ride on the Polar Express!

We LOVED wearing our PJ's to school today! We headed over to Chet's Creek Church to watch The Polar Express on the big screen! After watching the movie our kiddos were given bells to ring all the way back to class! 

Thanksgiving Feast!

Our bellies are stuffed! We had such a wonderful time celebrating Thanksgiving by dressing up as Pilgrims!  Our play could not have gone any better and we were so impressed with our students that memorized his or her lines! Our first graders are always going above and beyond! Thank you to the many families that contributed to the amazing spread of food! 

Fall Celebration!

We had so much fun at our Fall Celebration! We started off our day with our Literacy Parade! If you were not able to join us for the parade here is a link to watch a video of the parade :)

https://vimeo.com/78445540

Then, our kiddos rotated through 6 different centers which included Spider Hats, Spider Cups, Spider Cupcakes, Boo Plates, Pumpkin Jars, and Toilet Paper Pumpkins! We hope you enjoyed the keepsakes as much as we did! 

Thank you so much to the parents who volunteered or donated in order to make this party a success! We couldn't have done it without you!

Here are a few pictures from the party:

Safety First

Our evacuation drill is complete and if we must say so...our students did a Great job! We actually heard, "That was fun!" 

We left our Chet's Creek building at 10:00 sharp and we were home by 10:45. The students were well prepared with many discussions this week about why we practice many different kinds of drills. They also had their poetry folders in hand to occupy them during their short stay at Chet's Creek Church. Thank you Chet's Creek Church for hosting us and the sweet treats you gave us as we left! We all feel very prepared and safe if we ever have to evacuate our school. 

We LOVED the Zoo!

Here are some pictures from our field trip to the Zoo!  We learned all about animals and were even able to pet a few!

Quick Images with 5th Grade Buddies!

On Friday, we met up with our 5th Grade Buddies! Our first graders were very excited to be reunited as they had been asking all week about what we were going to do with our buddies! 

This week we focused on playing the Quick Image Math Game. The buddies took turns placing counters on tens-frames without his or her buddy looking. The partner then was given 2 seconds to look at the image and then had to determine how many counters were shown on the tens-frames!

The buddies discussed the strategies they used in order to determine the number of counters in such a short amount of time! Our 1st graders LOVE playing this game and I think that some of our 1st graders were better at this game than our 5th grade buddies! Shhhh! We will let that be our little secret! :)

Here are some shots we captured of our kiddos in action!

And We're Off!

We are loaded up and ready to go! Here we come Jacksonville Zoo!

5th Grade Buddies!

Here at Chet's Creek, our first graders are paired up with fifth graders as buddies for the year. This past Friday was the first time that our buddies met! It was a HUGE success! Each and every first and fifth grader was excited to get to know one another!

Our 5th grade buddies will come to our classroom a few Fridays each month and will spend time reading and bonding with one another! This was such a neat sight to see how our first graders looked up to his or her 5th grade buddy while the 5th grader took on role of a mentor!

This first meeting was spent getting to know one another. They completed the worksheet pictured below together:

We look forward to seeing these relationships grow here at Chets Creek! Here are some pictures of our 1st and 5th graders during their first meeting:

Reflex Math Monday!

We are SO excited to share that four of our amazing first graders have received awards for their progress on Reflex Math!

Congratulations to the students pictured above! Job well done! These students have answered anywhere from 1,000 up to 2,000 math facts! 

Reflex math is a great way to increase fluency with math while having fun! Keep up the great work kiddos!

Open House

It was so nice to see the parents and our students after hours at school! 

"Parents like you are so Refreshing!" 

We were able to show off the amazing writing, reading, math, and science our class has been working on everyday! Our students took their parents on a savager hunt around our classroom to show case the important routines and their amazing work from each workshop. We printed photos of each student from the first day of school! It's amazing to see how much they've changed academically and physically in such a short time. 

Miss Greenhaw and Ms. Johnson are very luck teachers! 

Thank you for coming! 

Wild About Small Moment Writings

The first few weeks of first grade is spent getting to know each other and establishing rules and routines in our classroom. We focus on all the positives each student has and how they can contribute to the classroom. We also encourage “filling each other’s bucket” throughout our school day. After reading the book, The Crayon Box that Talked, we discussed how every crayon, just like every person, is different and can contribute to a successful classroom. Our first graders came to us having the knowledge of writing Small Moments! They have come from Kindergarten classes where they have learned to write Small Moment stories across pages, have studied and implemented mentor author techniques in their writing, have written poems and how-to and all-about books. These kiddos are ready to hit the ground running with their writing! We encourage them to write every day stretching out each word to make a complete sentence using punctuation and capitalization. After reading the book and talking about what makes each of us special, our first graders did just that…wrote what makes them special. Inteed we have a group full of students whom are all special in their own way!

Parents we look forward to seeing you Thursday night at Open House where you will see all your child's great small moment writings in their work over time writing folders. 

Our Small Moment's Writing Standard Based Bulletin Board

Take a Seat...

I am wild about our brand new freshly painted stools Miss Greenhaw made us this weekend! 

They are perfect for story time! 

Table Points Friday!

Happy Friday everyone!

Congratulations to Table 7 for earning the most table points this week! Throughout the week, each table tries to earn as many "monkeys" (table points) as possible. The table with the most monkeys wins a prize! 

Tables are able to earn points by working as a group to remain on task and go above and beyond what Miss Greenhaw and Ms. Johnson ask of our students! 

Table 7 earned 6 monkeys this week! Way to go kiddos! 

Remembering September 11th

Yesterday, we took some time to learn about September 11th, 2001. We read the book "September 12th", written by a 1st Grade Class after 9/11. 

The students were very interested and attentive during this lesson. After reading the book, the students then broke into Writer's Workshop and were asked to describe why they were proud to be an American. Here are a few examples of the AMAZING writing that some of our first graders wrote:

"My Dad died because my 

Dad was helping the world

When my Dad was helping the

World he was flying the 

Airplane he crashed in the ocean"

* front *

"because my mom

and my dad were in

the military together

and at the same

time. I love my"

*back*

"parents so much

they are a hero

they are the best!"

Welcome to 1st Grade!

Welcome ALL to our 1st Grade Jungle Blog!

We are so excited to have 36 students in our class this year! We are going to learn all sorts of new things this year while taking "A Walk on the Wild Side!"  We will use this Blog to post all of the fun happenings and learning occurring in our class!

Please subscribe via email to our Blog in the upper right hand corner :)

We love each and every one of our students and cannot wait to see how much they learn!

-Miss Greenhaw and Ms Johnson

Spirit Shirts

Our PTA does so much for our school!  

They always make sure Chets Creek is running smoothly and that we have the supplies we need.  The PTA gives every child and teacher in our school a spirit t-shirt that we  all wear throughout the year.  We encourage the students to wear these t-shirts on Fridays. One of our favorite days of the year is when everyone in the entire school wears their t-shirts on the same day.  

 Thank you PTA for our shirts!  

Wild About Animals

We are wild about animals!  

Our school is lucky enough to have a few visit us for the first three days of school.

We spotted this jaguar roaming around our school!

Some of our first graders hamming it up with the zebra and hyena!

...bears oh my!

What a special treat we have visiting and learning about these wild animals each day.