Happy Easter from Miss Charlotte and Nora!

Miss Charlotte wanted me to share this photo with all of you! She wishes everyone a Happy Easter!

Nora says "Mom, look what I found!"

Tuesday

April 7, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!
        Today is Tuesday. It's going to be another beautiful day! I hope you will get outside and have some fun in the sun! There are two new assignments for you on Seesaw. How is that going for you so far?

Love, Miss Lloyd

Hi families! I have seen that most of you are already set up on Seesaw-that's great! It would seem that the announcements I sent out to all families on Seesaw did not send to those of you who joined after I sent them. I'm trying to keep everyone up to date and informed about how to use it's features. If you have any questions, please just let me know!

Good Morning!

April 6, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!
        Today is Monday. Did you have a nice weekend? It was warm outside so I went on a lot of walks with Bella. We will be trying out some new ways of learning from home this week. I am excited to try it with all of you! Have a magnificent Monday!

Love, Miss Lloyd

Families, I will be transitioning to using Seesaw rather than this blog as we move forward. On Seesaw I can send out announcements to parents, students, or both. We can also share photos by having your child post them and then we can share them to the Seesaw blog. For now, if you prefer to send me your photos, I will keep posting them here under the choice board tab. My hope is that you and your child will play around with Seesaw and become comfortable sharing things on your own. I will be assigning math and Fundations to your children on Seesaw as well starting today! Please don't stress if you don't get this all figured out on day one. Feel free to contact me with any and all questions you have as we navigate this new territory together. 

Happy Friday!

April 3, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!
         Today is Friday. It looks like it's going to be a rainy one. Bella thinks it's best to get cozy and nap on a rainy day. What will you accomplish today?

Missing you all so much,

<3 Miss Lloyd

Parents, you can expect to see an e-mail from Seesaw at some point today. Seesaw is the online platform we will use starting Monday! I feel confident that it is going to be a great teaching and connecting tool for you, your children and me. You should also receive an e-mail from Ms. Z today outlining some details for next week. As always, if you have questions I'm just an email, phone call, or blog post away!

Good Morning Everyone!

April 2, 2020

Good Morning Fantastic First Graders!
       Today is Thursday. I look forward to your pictures, letters, and updates about your learning. I can't wait to see what creative things you do today! I'm proud of all of you for working so hard to keep learning and trying new things! Have a great day!

<3 Miss Lloyd 

April 1st!

April 1, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!
          Today is Wednesday and the first day of April! It is supposed to be beautiful today! Any chance you will get outside to enjoy the sunshine? I know Bella and I will! I hope to hear from you and your family about what you did! Have a great day!

Love, Miss Lloyd

Bella likes to play and then get her belly rubbed when it's sunny outside :) Here's a silly picture of her doing that!

Tuesday

March 31, 2020

Good Morning Fantastic First Graders!
        Today is Tuesday and the last day of March! What was your favorite part of this month? I  would say mine was the Kids Heart Challenge community meeting. What a fun day we had together! I hope you continue to enjoy learning at home. Have a terrific Tuesday!

Love, Miss Lloyd

Good Morning!

March 30, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!
        Today is Monday. At school, we would have music today. How can you enjoy or make some music at home today? I hope you had a great weekend! Did you do anything outside in the sun Saturday? Have a great day!

Missing you! <3 Miss Lloyd

As always, I'm here for anything you need! Just let me know. 

It's FRIDAY!

March 27, 2020

Good Morning First Graders,

         Today is Friday. I know it's hard that we can't be together, but I hope you can continue to enjoy this time with your family. I know I will cherish all the wonderful memories we have from our first grade time together. Remember when some of us would have a bad day, but then at closing circle I would say we ALL share a favorite part of the day or an appreciation? Let's try to do that today. At the end of your school day today, share with your family and/or comment here with your favorite part of the day or appreciation you have for someone else.

I miss you, <3 Miss Lloyd

March 26, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!
       Today is Thursday. We would normally have P.E. today at school. What can you do today to stay active and moving? Get outside? Do a GoNoodle? Play tag with your family? Go for a walk or hike? I'm going to take Bella for a long walk later today! Have a terrific day learning at home!

Love, Miss Lloyd

I realized when one of you asked about the writing prompts on the choice board that I forgot to include them in the packet. Here is a list of writing prompts and a website to check out for more prompts. These are just for fun and to get students to enjoy writing!

1. Imagine a giant box is delivered to your front doorstep with your name on it. What’s inside and what happens when you open it?
2. Write a short story about what it might be like if you woke up one morning with a mermaid tail.
3. Which is better, winter or summer? Write about the reasons why you think winter or summer is better.
4. Write about what would it be like if you had an alligator as a pet.
5. If you had $1,000, what would you buy and why?
6. Write a story using these 5 words: apple, train, elephant, paper, banjo
7. What do you want be when you grow up and why?
8. Who is your favorite person on the planet? What do you like most about that person?
9. If you could have any secret super power, what would you want it to be and why?
10. Write about 3 places you would like to travel someday. What do these three places have in common?
11. Write about a time you felt really happy. What happened? What made you feel happy?
12. Imagine what would happen if someone shrunk you down to be only 1″ tall. How would your life change?
13. If you were in charge of the whole world, what would you do to make the world a happier place?
14. Write a story about what it would be like to climb to the very top of the highest mountain in the world.
15. If you were in charge of planning the school lunch menu, what foods would you serve each day?
16. What are some of your favorite animals? What do you like about them?
17. Imagine that dogs take over the world. What do they make the humans do?
18. Write a story about flying to outer space and discovering a new planet.
19. You are a mad scientist and have invented a new vegetable. What is it called? What does it look like? What does it taste like? Most importantly: Is it safe to eat?
20. You go to school one morning to discover your best friend has been turned into a frog by an evil witch! How do you help your friend?

Happy Wednesday!

March 25, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!

        Today is Wednesday. If we were at school we would have Art and Library today. It would be great if you could try to do some art from home and have someone read a good book to you today! If you are able to make that happen, feel free to send me a picture of your art or comment below with what book you read! Have a great day!!

Love, Miss Lloyd

There are these cool websites called Raz-Kids and Headsprout, all part of Learning A-Z that are now free to teachers and families. I looked into it yesterday and I was able to set up an account for each first grader. These websites allow students to read leveled books (what we call "good fit books" at school) and work on some phonics skills we would be learning in the classroom. I can even assign certain books for your child to read. At this point, I know you all have work I sent home, and for some of you it's probably plenty for now. So this is not a requirement, but I am curious about how many families might be interested in this? I like it because, while Epic is great, Raz-Kids allows your children to read books that will help them grow as readers. Comment below or email me your thoughts! Thank you for your continued hard work and dedication to your child's education.

Snow Day!

March 24, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!

       Today is Tuesday. I got at least 7 inches of snow where I live. What about you? Today, if you can, try to get outside and enjoy the snow. You never know when spring might stay for good!

Love, Miss Lloyd

P.S. Bella says she'll play in the snow later. Right now she's warm and cozy in bed!

Today I wanted to share GoNoodle with you. From what I heard from your children, some of you already do GoNoodle at home! We do GoNoodles at school as a class every now and then. They're a fun way to get up and moving and be silly together!

Also, I'm working on what remote learning at home will look like if this extends beyond April 6. I would love your feedback on what's working right now, what isn't working, and what you would like for your first grader moving forward. The materials you have should get you to April 6 and I will continue to share any extras I can. Feel free to comment or email me with your feedback!

Stay well-Miss Lloyd 

Good Morning First Graders!

Every day I post a morning message in the classroom and during morning meeting, our teacher's helper reads it to the class. Well...you ALL get to be the teacher's helper from home for now. I'm sure your parents need your help as they are working hard to be your teachers! Here is today's morning message if you would like to have your first grader read it with you.

March 23, 2020

Good Morning First Graders!

          Today is Monday. It's the first full week of learning from home. If you have questions, remember I am still here to help! You can have your parents email me or post on our blog. What has been your favorite part of learning from home so far?

Have a great day!

Love, Miss Lloyd 

P.S. Can you find three trick words and two blends in the morning message?

I also wanted to share a video with you. This is the video we started to make of the first graders reading their book, The ABCs of Kindness. It wasn't quite done and it's a little rough at this time. I filled in the spots we hadn't finished yet. Rough draft or not, I thought the students would like to see it! Click here to watch: The ABCs of Kindness

We got this!

Happy Friday families and first graders! I came upon this photo today and thought you would all like to see it. In our first grade classroom if students finish a whole group activity before their friends we have a menu of "When I'm Done" choices. Some choices are: read at your table, read with a friend on the rug, color, write in your journal, practice trick words. This sweet group of first graders almost always choose to read together on the rug.

While this photo made me sad for a moment because I miss you all, it made me so happy and hopeful that we will be back together soon! While we can't read this close to each other right now, we can stay in touch, read with pets and family, and be grateful to have such great classmates and friends! Remember you can send me your pictures today and I'll post them under the choice board tab!

If you want some rainy day ideas:

I'm here for you today, whatever you need! Not to add anything to your to-do list, but if you have time and can just test out the comment button below so I can get a sense of which families are seeing the blog, that would be wonderful! Just a quick hi or got it will work just fine. Have a great Friday of learning at home! <3 Miss Lloyd 

Choice Board Tab

I added a"Choice Board Pictures" tab to our blog so I can share all the wonderful pictures you have been sending me and your children can see their friends. I'm still trying to figure out if you can comment directly with your pictures but it does not appear that you can. I'm happy to keep uploading them as you send them! This tab should be right next to the "Home" tab at the top. If you are looking at the blog on your phone you will need to select work "Home" at the top and then you will see all the tabs our blog has and you can click the one you want to look at.

The other tabs have links to the online resources I included in your packet so you can access those from the blog as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions about how to use the blog. I know it's not always easy to access, but for now it's our best way to stay connected! Thanks for your patience and support.

Helping from Home

Hi first graders and families! Bella and I are here at home ready to help you with anything you might need today. It would be awesome if you could comment below with a picture or blurb about what you're up to and how it's going today :)

Hello First Graders!

This is all explained in the letter in your packet but sometimes seeing faces is comforting! Please let me know if any questions come up as you are looking through your bag.

Oobleck!

Today we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck and of course...we had to make some of our own! We got messy and we also learned that oobleck is a colloid, which means it's solids and liquids mixed together!

Dress up like your favorite character day!

Dress up like your favorite character day was a success!

Here's everyone who dressed up in first grade!

Harry Potter with Hedwig!

Gerald and Piggy!

"Sleeping beauty's daughter" and Minnie Mouse!

Another Gerald and Piggy!

Pikachu and Harry Potter face off!

Who would win?!

I love to read week!

This week is I LOVE TO READ WEEK! We kicked it off today by running our school's community meeting! Students did a great job leading and a special shout out to Clair and Cooper for reading We are in a Book by Mo Willems to the whole school-way to go! At the end of the day we buddy read with second grade:

Here is the schedule for the rest of the week:

Tuesday: Drop everything and read!

Wednesday: Dress up like your favorite character & Green eggs and ham lunch (students who sign up for hot lunch will get scrambled eggs, ham, and fruit)

Thursday: Teacher swap read aloud!

Friday: Pick out a free book to keep!

Puzzle Time!

Thanks Cooper for sharing your AWESOME Stave puzzle with us! It was a choice time hit!

Happy 100th Day of School!!

We had a fun day celebrating the 100th day of school today! We had a special community meeting with 100 movements/exercises, a cookie at snack because Ms.Viola made 100 cookies (one for everyone!), a Hershey kiss scavenger hunt, and ten frame fruit loop necklaces!

Matching our Hershey kisses on the hundred chart

Where are they...?

I think we found some!

Fruit Loop Necklaces!

"Can we please eat them now, Miss Lloyd?!"

Happy 100th day of first grade!!

Happy Groundhog Day!

We celebrated Groundhog Day on Friday with a craft and some writing about what we we hoped would happen today! Punxsutawney Phil claims spring will come early this year. We’ll see what happens! 

Kindness is Cool!

Thank you so much to everyone who came to Westshire last night and saw our Kindess project. The students worked incredibly hard to prepare. We are so pleased that we were able to share our work with all of you! Here is our kindness video. Stay tuned for a video of us reading our kindness book!

COME JOIN US!

Tomorrow night, Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 6 pm will be our book celebration! Come see our very own Piggy and Elephant book about kindness, watch our video where each of us speaks about kindness and ask questions about how we created this project! We can't wait to share our work with you!

Snowy Science!

Why is snow white? If water is clear and snow is just frozen water, why does it look white? We explored this question today and made our own snowflakes with wax paper. Ask your first grader if they remember why snow is white!

Students did a great job working together and being kind friends! We will get to see our snowflakes tomorrow after they dry!

Merry Christmas!

Our post is a little late but we had to share that before vacation we had a surprise Christmas party with second grade! We watched a Christmas movie, decorated cookies and made a tree craft! It was so much fun!

First graders also made a bunch of tree crafts! We did doubles and word families!

Our doubles trees

Our word family trees!