Settling into November

I can not believe this is the last week of October and we are going to be welcoming in November!  Wow...the time has definitely gotten the better of me lately and with so many different things happening in the weeks to come I wanted to fill you in with some of the details! 

On Friday, November 5th, we will be having our Harvest Party Extravaganza!  This will be a time for all the 1st graders to have a little fun on a Friday afternoon!!  Our party will start promptly at 1:50pm and end at 2:50pm.  I will be looking for some volunteers to help us out so our party runs smoothly.  Let me know if you would be interested but remember you MUST have a criminal background check on file with the district in order to volunteer in our classroom and as easy as it may be to bring younger brothers/sisters to our party, it would be greatly appreciated if they do not participate at this time.  It's a pretty crazy and fun afternoon and we would want not any little brothers/sisters to get lost in the fun while moms and dads are busy running games. 

There will also be a sign-up sheet for anyone interested in donating some supplies to our cause.  If you want to sign-up for something and can't make it in to sign-up, just send me an email or write me a note and tell me what you would like to donate.  We are looking for:

• Libby's Pumpkin mix
• vanilla pudding
• milk
• spoons
• graham crackers
• plastic cups
• whipped cream (Lots!! yummy!!)
• prizes (these can be small trinkets for games...think small carnival games)
• candy (more prizes for the games)
• Volunteers to run the games...see me if you would like to do that :)

This week we will start working on all of our assessments and that means that November also brings us to grading day and conferences.  There is no school on grading day, which is November 12th and there will be no school the week of Thanksgiving.  We will still have conferences on Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving Break, but we will be cutting back our times for conferences this year.  Usually teachers have conferences from 8am-8pm on both Monday and Tuesday, but this year we are only meeting for conferences from 8am-8pm on Monday and 8am-12pm on Tuesday.  With limited time this year, please make sure your time works for you and if it doesn't, please let me know as soon as possible because spaces will be going fast.  There will be more information about this coming home soon in Friday Folders.

Lastly, remember that November 10th is picture re-take day and if you think you may want retakes have your student dress accordingly on that day.  There may be more information about that too...keep an eye out!! Also, this Friday, October 29th, is our dress-up as your favorite character from a book Day!!  This is to welcome our author, Larry Dane Brimner, to our school. 

Please remember:

• no masks or weapons
• face painting needs to be done at home before school starts
• you NEED to have the book at school with you so we know who you are

I hope everyone had a great weekend and no one is floating out to sea with all our rain!!  Stay dry and see you on Monday for our last week in October :) 

Mrs. Berry

Farm to Market Highlights

I just wanted to say Thank You to our Salem-Keizer School District Meal Program--Sodexo for bringing us the Farm to Market!  Last week we had AMAZING morning filled with lots of information about eating healthier foods and what we could add to our meals to get more fruits and vegetables into the mix of things.

We got to meet a real Dairy Princess all the way from Tillamook, OR who gave us lots of great information about all the different kinds of cows and what great things they give us.  Thank you Dairy Princesses! You were great!!

The Department of Agriculture was also there and we learned that our very own counties of Polk and Marion produce the most amount of fruits and vegetables within the entire state of Oregon!  We even got to make our very own "bean" necklaces that we were able to take home and watch grow into something!  

Is your bean growing starting to grow sprouts??  See if yours can grow big and strong! 

  We had a great morning and we finished off with a great FREE lunch that had fruits for EVERY letter of the alphabet...that was a LOT of fruit!!! Thanks again Sodexo!!

Mrs. Berry

Jog, 1st Graders, Jog!!

We all made it through the jog-a-thon with lots of laps!!  Everyone did really well and a good time was had by all.  We were separated into color groups of red, blue, yellow, and orange and that is where we checked in with a volunteer to mark the number of laps we ran. 

Thank you Mrs. Herbert and Mr. Hansen for helping organize this year's event and a HUGE thank you goes out to our amazing Myers PTO who puts together our annual fundraisers!!! THANKS!!! I also want to thank our local businesses for providing all the bananas and water as a snack when we finished our jog-a-thon!  It was definitely great to have something to munch on when we were finished and the water helped hydrate us when we were done!

Check us out as we helped raise money for Myers Elementary!  Happy Jogging!

 

 

We are ready to go and jog, jog, jog!!!

Look at us go!!!

 

How many laps did you do??



Definitely tired 1st graders, but happy to have participated in the Myers Jog-a-thon! 

 See you next year!!!!

Have a great weekend and enjoy the fall season!!

Mrs. Berry

Words of the Month

Hopefully by this time everyone has had a chance to practice the Words of the Month for September and October.  I wanted to give you some information about the words that are on the list and what are some things you can do with these words at home. 

The words that are chosen for the Words of the Month are high frequency sight words.  That means that these are words that we see A LOT in our everyday reading and writing.  These are words that can not be sounded out but simply just need to be memorized.  When we know these words without having to stop to remember them, it makes our reading much more fluent when we read--meaning we do not have to stop our reading to try and remember what the words are.  They are easy to recall  and easy to read words and we should know all these words by heart.

These words are also posted in various places in our room and I am trying to hold everyone accountable to spelling these words correctly.  Most of us know where to find these words and are starting to recall them quickly in our reading and as we write them in our journals during writing time.

Some things you can do at home to make these words easier to spell and read are:

• look for the words in magazines
• have a word hunt when you are reading
• bodyspell these words (ask your first grader how to bodyspell)
• Write these words in sentences
• use play-dough or modeling clay to make these words

You can also check out these websites for more practice: 

1. http://www.netrover.com/~crose/dolch/dolch.htm
2. http://candohelperpage.com/sightvocab_1.html#anchor_378
3. http://www.gamequarium.com/readquarium/sightgames.html

I hope these websites give you some ideas of what you can be doing at home with your first grader and feel free to check in with me if you have any questions about anything we are doing in our classroom. 

Also, be on the lookout for "turtle words" to start making their appearance!  If you are not familiar with "turtle words" it is simply an at-home spelling program that reinforces these high frequency words on a more individualized program that works at each student's own pace.  This is just another tool to incorporate these words to make them more fluent in our reading and writing.  Don't be alarmed if you see turtle words that are repeated as Words of the Month and vice versa if you see Words of the Month repeated as turtle words!  This will just make practicing the Words of the Month easier and then we should be able to recall them much faster as we read and write. 

Lastly, Don't forget this Wednesday is our annual Jog-a-thon fundraiser!!  Our Jog-a-thon is during our Rhythms time so make sure to wear comfortable tennis shoes!  Water and a light snack will be provided.  If you would like to come and cheer us on we will be jogging from 1:00pm-1:30pm.  Just check in at the front office to get a visitors badge and meet us in the gym!  Hope to see you there! :)

Mrs. Berry

Aloha from the Myers BBQ!

A good time was had by all who came!  Lots of parents stopped by to our annual Myers style Hawaiian BBQ.  There were plenty of hamburgers, hot dogs, and chocolate chip cookies to go around.  Check out some of our classmates who were definitely "hanging ten" on Friday during our BBQ!!

 good food...

                Good                                                                                     friends...

 and good times!! 

Hope everyone had a great weekend and don't forget that there is only 4 days of school this week because Friday, October 8th, is a Statewide In-Service day for teachers so there is no school.  See you on Monday! :) 

Mrs. Berry