Our First Day

Our first day was a blur. Ms. Leom looked up and it was five minutes to Recess. She looked up again, and it was fifteen minutes until specials. First goal for tomorrow: make snack time a priority. Our lunch is an hour later than last year, and it threw off the whole timing of the day. The students were so respectful, doing such a nice job following directions and participating, she barely remembered to take pictures.

Here is a quick peek at some of our moments ...

Our media specialist, Mrs. Vickers welcomed us on announcements

 Ms. Leom wanted to start our year off on the right foot ... she started to teach us how to play Cats Cradle with yarn ...

 Some lessons we learned ... some students already knew how to play Cats Cradle ... some students made progress ... some students need more practice ... we like when people encourage us ... we like when we can laugh about our mistakes (not take everything so seriously) ... we appreciate when people are patient ... we liked being able to move and talk ... we like when people were forgiving ... we liked working with others ... it was difficult to stretch and loop, parts of the pattern were a challenge, it can be hard to explain to others and sharing examples were helpful ... we took time to learn about how we learn, and what we want for our class to be successful. We want our classroom to be a safe place to learn. We are all making progress in developing our community.

We practiced a quick fire drill and severe weather drill

 We are making our first classroom book. Students worked on the pages, and Ms. Leom went to each table and helped students organize their materials.

Ms. Leom is organizing materials with this table

this is table is starting their book pages

more book page work

more book page work

Students need time to talk, to share stories, and get to know each other. Working on our cubbies and having a chance to get to know each other in smaller groups is a good way to spend our first day.

It was raining outside, so we had outside Recess. Students had a variety of choices.

Some took time to check out the classroom library

others played Cats Cradle

drawing was another choice 

several games were started

creating your own crafts is a fun option

of course, Ms. Leom will take a selfie!

random building with notched popsicle sticks was interesting to this group

some Cats Cradle, some reading and looking on

This is a quick picture of our tables at the end of lunch ... not everyone is pictured, there were students who were cleaning up their space and starting to line up ... 

We took a moment to take a class picture. This isn't all of our students. We will take another one, hopefully under the bluest of skies.

Students had an option of sharing their pages for the book we are creating. Students had the option to pass if they didn't want to share their page. They could just tell about their families. If they passed, they were asked to find one person in the room to show their page to before handing in to be bound.

We tried to set up our iPads today, but we had a message about "your credentials are not recognized" that had us set those aside, while we asked for outside help.

We enjoyed some quiet reading time. Ms. Leom made personalized book marks for every student, and she passed them out.

We met our high school helper today and our Art teacher, Ms. Peterson. Check back for more details about these important people in our world!