Sept. 1, 2010

Dear Parents and Friends,

What a great first day of school. We began with Morning Meeting  Greetings and sang "This Little Light of Mine."  We also read a book called, "My First Day of First Grade."

In Math, we found seats for our 22 second-grade math students and we did a categorizing activity (ex: Everyone who is wearing white stand over here. Everyone who is not wearing white, stand over there..." )  We practiced "Circling Up" outside with Mrs. Powers' class, and we can now circle up  it in 10 seconds! Someone had the smart idea of everyone holding hands and then taking a step backwards.  We drew self-portraits to hang in our classroom, and we practiced secret hand signals for asking to get a drink or going to the bathroom. We learned other important routines like closing our lockers quietly, "signing out" to go to the bathroom, and pushing our chairs in and picking up our areas.

Later in the day, we composed our list of good classroom rules, and we ended with Afternoon Meeting and Compliments.  I think these kids are going to sleep well tonight. It's hard work creating a civilization :)

We are encouraging students to bring in water bottles and leave them here. Also, if your child brings something for snack or lunch that requires being ripped open, I'd like to suggest that he or she keep a small round-tipped scissors in their lunch box to be able to cut the item open.

Shhhh: Mr. Bolger is bringing in some class pets, but everyone is going to have to wait 'til tomorrow to see what they are.

Sleep well, everyone, and celebrate your successful first day back at school!

Mr. Bolger