Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!

Honestly, I am still so speechless. I cannot say thank you enough for the amazing support and generosity that families showed on Friday for my surprise bridal shower. I am just in awe at how amazingly caring the kids, families, and my incredible colleagues are to put together such a fun and wonderful party. I had absolutely no idea. I mean, I literally had things planned for Friday afternoon, walked upstairs after lunch and saw 36 kids and 5 of my colleagues standing in the room singing "Happy Wedding Day To You!"

Let me just reiterate - 36 kids kept this entire party a surprise for several weeks. HOW? Haha, according to my colleagues they felt there were a few "close calls" (see below) but I truly was oblivious.

Enjoy the pictures (taken by Mrs. Mandigo because I was literally in shock for most of the party) and again thank you for thinking of me, the feeling is indescribable and I am completely flattered.

The set up...thanks Mrs. Patterson for telling me you were moving the rocking chair downstairs because it was taking up too much room. Apparently that's not what you were really doing. 

Thanks Mrs. Mandigo's class for bringing a buffet of snacks and drinks. Apparently the snacks were in a closed box under the table I eat lunch at every day. 

And while I thought I was switching lunch duty days to help a colleague out, apparently I was being removed from the room so this could all be set up.

I came in after lunch duty expecting to see the kids getting ready for spelling. Needless to say...they weren't.

I still really don't know how all of these gifts got to school without me knowing.

I was wondering how they could all make cards with the same awesome stickers and materials....apparently they made cards during a special. ...sneaky.

The kids had a "make-Miss-Snyder's-Wedding-Dress" competition. Each team got a roll of toilet paper and streamers. They had to walk the runway so I could decide what I liked in a wedding dress.

It's May 14th..

...and we all have pretty much one thing on our mind...

The chicks are hatching next week!

Opinion Writing

We have been learning how to use evidence and details to support our statements and persuade our readers. 

Our inspiration for our opinion pieces? Our collections! We have been setting up dog shows, rock competitions, dinosaur races, and more! But who will win the main event in your first grader's competition?

 

First Grade Gardeners

We have been learning about life cycles! While we've been learning about different animal life cycles and are experiencing the beginning of a chicken's life cycle, we have also been learning about plant life cycles.

This week, Johanna Herron, Senior Agriculture Development Specialist, talked to us about plants, how to plant, and plants as food. We got started on planting our own vegetables so we can see their life cycle in action too!

We made our own seed tape! We used toilet paper, moistened it, and put in the seeds. 

We worked together to plant potatoes, radishes, onions, and carrots!

We filled out "ballots" to predict what would sprout first, what they would look like, and what they would taste like!

Johanna talked to us about how foods can be processed - sometimes minimally.

We worked with an adult to learn how to safely peel carrots. Then we prepped our own snack!

Then we got to taste different types of carrots: the carrots we peeled, baby carrots, crinkle cut carrots, and shredded carrots! We couldn't stop munching - almost all of the pictures of us were mid-chew. :)

Now it's all about patience...what will sprout first? More to come...

See Me Beautiful

Thank you for all coming to the performance and supporting the first and second grade classes!
Our superstar first graders are so proud of themselves...and so exhausted!

 And now...the moment you've been waiting for - our movie from the performance - "See Me Beautiful!"

Go ahead. Watch it again. They're beautiful every time.

What is Beautiful?

One of the songs we are singing for the spring concert is called "Everything is Beautiful." So we have been talking about what makes someone beautiful. 

At first, kids shared out about what they thought was beautiful about a person...

No huge surprise, but all of our ideas were about outer beauty...at first. 

We kept sharing ideas about what made someone beautiful and all of the sudden...someone shared that someone's heart could make them beautiful.

The wheels began turning and these thoughtful first graders started raising their hands to share other things that might make someone beautiful on the INSIDE.

Then each first grader stood at the front of the room and we shared out what we thought was beautiful on the outside of the person and then what we thought was beautiful on the inside of that person.

Toward the end, everyone was smiling and laughing. We kept thinking of more ideas about inner beauty. We started talking about evil queens from story books and how it didn't matter how beautiful they were on the outside because they were "down right rotten" on the inside. We talked about how we could tell if someone was being beautiful on the inside.

After our discussion, we brainstormed a new list about what makes us beautiful. Here's what we came up with...