Earth Day 2009

Reduce, reuse, and recycle was the focus of our day. Thanks to Mrs. McGowan and her website, our class read a reader's theater to celebrate the occasion. Watch the movie and learn some ways you too can help the Earth. We enjoyed some dirt cups with our friends in Ms. Garver and Mrs. Patenaude's class. The April family homework project was to make a sculpture or invention out of recycled materials and we had the coolest creations come in the room! We had an elephant made from plastic bottles and duct tape and the perfect pet dog that you can even wag the tail. We had a painted SpongeBob and even a snake from aluminum cans and an Easter egg. A HUGE thank you to all the familes that participated. You are really using your smarts and just think you recycled!

Spring Fling 2009

It is hard to believe Spring Break 2009. We enjoyed a wonderful day together last Friday. We read a great story in our reading series titled A Fruit is a Suitcase For Seeds. Children brought in fruit and we made a friendship fruit salad to eat with our Easter cookies. We looked at fruit with pits like the plum and peach brought in, fruit with many seeds like the cantaloupe, strawberries, and kiwi. I loved the variety and so did the class. A HUGE thanks to our wonderful helpers Ms. Jen, Mr. Woods, and Grandma Patterson we hunted for eggs and filled our hand painted paper baskets. It was a lovely Spring afternoon and such a nice way to start the Spring Break. Thank you to all the parents for the donated filled eggs and the fruit.

Our message to Ruby Bridges...

Gabi's grandma, Cheryl Rich, is a director of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. It houses a very special exhibit, The Power of Children: Make a Difference. One of those children is Ruby Bridges. Ruby was a young girl in the 1960's that was integrated into an all white school. She overcame great adversity and helped change the world for education today. She is one of several children integrated at the time and remains humble to this day about the effects of her determination and the compassion she gave the crowds she walked through daily. We read books about Ruby Bridges and talked about all of the hardships she endured through those difficult times. We even watched the Disney movie. Each of us learned something about how a child at 6 could change the world. We wrote and read our stories in the Voicethread below. We are so fortunate that Mrs. Rich will show our presentation to Ruby Bridges today while she is visiting the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Thank you for taking the time to view our presentation.

St. Patrick's Day 2009

WOW! What a fabulous day we had today. We participated in St. Patrick's Day 2009. It was an online project to calculate the number of the famous marshmallows within a 14 oz. box of Lucky Charms. Our pictures are below and the results are in!!! We had 60 rainbows in the box and that far exceeded the others. Gold-42, clovers-23, horseshoes-29, stars-22, moons-20, hearts-35, and balloons-36. We had so much fun with the unscramble and word search from the Technospud Projects by Jen site. THANK YOU to all the teachers that help with this worldwide project!! We read Leprechaun on the Loose and shared our family projects. I was so impressed by the rainbows some families decorated and the ingenious traps! You all are so clever. We set those traps before lunch and do you know what happened? Our room was turned upside down by that wee little guy. Chairs were turned over, glitter was sprinkled throughout the room, and there were even chairs up on tables. We didn't catch that Lucky Leprechaun but he left notes in all the traps and told us he was too clever to be caught! He was nice enough to leave us some yummy cookies. A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Weir for helping us all day today. We love ya! Can't wait to see what the next adventure bring us...

Read Across America Day 2009

Dr. Seuss would have been proud of our festivities for the day. In fact, he would have wanted to spend the day doing all the fun things we did to celebrate one of the most famous children's authors of all time. We started the day with green eggs and ham. YUM! Really, some ate more than others. Mr. Meeks and Mr. Weir joined us as guest readers to read their favorite stories. Ms. Arlene joined us after lunch with a fun story of Silly Tilly. Thank you so much for spending part of the day with us and we loved hearing your stories. I read the Cat in the Hat to the class and we made hats. Crazy socks were all around. I just loved the goldfish ones and I have to say the most creative award went to Morgyn for those googly eyes soocks!Thanks for looking so cute!We completed a goldfish graphing activity after hearing part of One Fish, Two Fish, Red fish, Blue Fish. Ashley and Paul brought in a super cute snack of Dr. Seuss hats made from a vanilla wafer, icing, and gummy life savers. Our Scholastic News for the month came with a small booklet about Dr. Seuss and so we read that together and talked many of his books. We sang happy birthday and enjoyed a cookie cake. Our class donated a Dr. Seuss book, autographed by the class, to a newborn baby today at Halifax Hospital. It was our pleasure to share the joy of reading with a new friend. My hope is when your child recognizes a Dr. Seuss book, they will enjoy happy memories of this day.

Young Author Celebration

For as long as I can remember, the Volusia County Reading Department sponsored the Young Author Celebration. Each school chose 2 representatives to share their original work of literary art. Some wrote poems, short stories, fiction, and some even non-fiction. Due to the budget cuts this year the county wide celebration will not take place. However, at Cypress Creek Elementary the celebration lives on! Thanks to Debbie Tarmann and our Florida Future Educators of America club the aspiring authors will be celebrated at the end of March with a continental breakfast.
It takes so many drafts, editing, revising, and just plan hard work to come up with a final piece to submit for each student. We started about 2 weeks ago with a favorite family memory. Each child wrote and we discussed staying on topic, word choice, details, and even some time order vocabulary. We edited and revised and I sent them to the computer to type. By the way, our class has been fortunate enough to have been chosen to pilot mini-laptops in the 1st grade classrooms. We are using them to type and then print out the stories. Each child is anxiously awaiting their opportunity to try out the latest technology piece in the room. Gabi has worked on a story about her family trip to Brazil earlier this year. She lacked focus at first but when we sat down to talk she created a wonderful story about a special pizza place she visited with her family. She typed her story and then another round of revising and editing. She learned how to use the spell check and finally printed her story for the book. Her next steps are illustrating and her About the Author page. I have about 3 weeks to help along all the other children to have their works of art ready for the 19th deadline. I can't wait to see what happens and I hope you check back for updates on books we publish. Thank you Gabi for all your hard work! I knew you could do it and I am so proud of your book!

Valentine's Day 2009

Happy Valentine's Day! Each student made a valentine holder for their February family project. They were adorable and so creative! We enjoyed a day of friendship together on Friday. We missed our friends Vincent, Connor, and Jacob. Ivy Grace was enjoying her birthday at Disney World. We made a parent Sweetheart gift, shared some snacks, and enjoyed looking over our friendship cards. Thank you to everyone for making this a day to remember. Enjoy the long weekend in honor of President's Day. See you on Tuesday.