Open House

Open House is such a BIG night for everyone! For the kids, it is a chance to share our classroom, our home away from home, to our family. For the parents, it is a night to see what their child does when they trust Cypress Creek with their most prized possession. For teachers, it is a night we showcase our teaching, design, and organization for the world to see. It was a FABULOUS evening! Most of the families toured the classroom completing the scavenger hunt with their child. We showed off our Promethean ActivBoard. We took pictures of families sharing in the joy that is 1st grade. Thank you to the students and parents for making every day like Disney World here at Cypress Creek Elementary. Did you see Connor with Annie? Guess what his name was drawn for the $25 worth of free books from the Book Fair AND I won $25 worth of books too just for being his teacher! Thanks Connor! We heart you! I got a copy of the latest Pigeon book, Fancy Nancy, Ruby Bridges, Fly Guy, and Dirt on My Shirt. We can't wait to read them.

Where is Annie?

I got the most unbelievable gift this week from a great teacher friend! My friend Robert Miller does some consulting and presenting on behalf of Brainpop. He gave me a cardboard Annie! Now for those of you that do not know Annie let me explain. Tim & Moby are THE characters of Brainpop. They answer questions and teach children through 4-5 minute movies about all kinds of topics. Teachers love the quizzes and activities that accompany the movies. Brainpop decided to make a primary user friendly approach with Annie & Moby. That is where my 1st graders have come to know and LOVE Annie. Here is a picture of Annie with my own children Kaile & Carson.
I have decided to do a "Where's Annie?" installment on our class blog. Stay tuned for clues and pictures and see if you can guess what Annie is up to in our classroom, around our school, and in our community.

Wordle anyone?

OK I have seen these "wordle" things before and thought how cool. I decided to finally have the website analyze my class blog. It looks at the text and looks at the number of times you say/write particular words. I was so happy to see that school, friends, thanks, reading, learning, classroom, and parents showed up the largest! It was pretty neat and you might want to try it out some day. The gracious people at http://www.wordle.net/ created the wordle art! Thank you wordle.net

Time Flies...

Ok so it is true-time flies when you are having fun. It has been quite some time since my last post and I can honestly say I can't believe how fast the days turn into weeks and then weeks and weeks...
We have been so busy learning about different scientists and various lab equipment so we can do some investigating. Take a look at 2 of our scientists, all ready for the part. In math, we finished up patterns and then moved right into geometry. Did you child show you their 3D shape bag? Did it make it home, unopened, before they could explain the different shapes? Thanks to Mrs. Tyner for the idea :) The carmels were cubes, Starburst-rectangluar prism, gumball-sphere, Hershey's Kiss-cone, and of course Smarties-cylinder. It was so tempting to eat them but I made them promise to eat after they explained it to you. Maybe tonight you could ask them how many faces, edges, and vertices? YES they do know what those are!