Beading

Today's request during indoor recess was to make bracelets with the beads in the closet. I never turn down requests for fine motor activities!

Career Day

What a creative and fun filled career day we had today! We had a great mix of careers and the information students shared showed they really worked hard to learn about the tools and skills needed to get the job done. Look who stopped by the room today...

A policeman 

(He gave me a parking ticket...ouch!)

A chef

A teacher

An artist

A penguin scientist

A hair dresser

I got a haircut...

Another police officer

(We had to be on our best behavior today!)

A deputy

An actress

(Dressed as Clara for the Nutcracker)

A veterinarian 

A snowboard patrolman

Another chef

(I hope they are cooking you dinner tonight!)

A nurse

An undercover police officer

(Good thing we were on our best behavior!)

A designer/seamstress

She even gave us a lesson on using the sewing machine...

...put other to work on fabric preparation....

...before stitching together the final product.

All in all, it was a GREAT career day. Thank you to parents and families for all the work you did on research and getting together some amazing outfits. I know this class can be anything they want to be!

Guidance

Mrs. Lord came for our second guidance lesson today. First she read the book, When Sophie Gets Angry.

Afterwards they talked about what happend in the story and how Sophie's feelings changed. Mrs. Lord taught the class that we have thoughts and thoughts create our feelings, which cause our actions. She has a good organizer to help students work through why they may have done something. 

Rather than asking children "why did you do that?" (Which they may not know the answer to), ask instead "How were you feeling when you ______?" This can help students to slow down and process what they were thinking and why they grabbed the toy/hit a sibling/ran out of the room/started crying/etc. I've found that asking these questions can also help students to calm down, and helps when future difficulties arise. 

The class also talked about techniques they use when they are angry and need to calm down. 

These are all great ideas!

Puzzle mania

With the cold weather outside we have been in for recess all week.

Today the students all danced in the gym for 20 minutes before returning to our normal indoor recess activities. 

Puzzles have recently taken over as one of the most popular activities. This is a great activity to build perseverance, as well as teamwork habits. As a person who could spend an entire afternoon working on a puzzle I'm thrilled. 

Feelings

On Friday, Mrs. Lord came for the first of six lessons with the class. The first lesson was all about feelings. Mrs. Lord talked about how thoughts lead to feelings. The students generated a great list of feelings before reading the book 'How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods'.

Mrs. Lord had the class try to identify how each food was feeling, and reminded them if they ever see a friend and aren't sure of his or her mood, they should ask. You can encourage them to do the same at home!

Job presentations

First grade was very lucky to have three guests come share their jobs with us today.

The EMT, Mr. Cosgrove, showed us a few tools from the truck and one of our students was lucky enough to demonstrate taking blood pressure.

Kevin Skarupa from WMUR talked about his job as a meteorologist and told us about clouds and what they can mean. 

He took a video of us and will be talking about what great listeners Underhill 1st graders are. Be sure to watch tomorrow morning at 6:15!!

Our 3rd visitor was a Manchester detective, Officer DuPont, who had a few students commit a "crime". He then went through some of the steps they take while solving the crime, including photographing the evidence and dusting for prints. Then each class even had a chance to go out into the Crime Lab truck!!

Officer DuPont was still around at lunch and when asked by our class he couldn't refuse an invitation to sit down with is for lunch. What a fun surprise for me when I went to pick them up from lunch--unfortunately I didn't have anything I take a picture with!!

Today was a great experience for the students--be sure to ask them about it at home tonight!!

Building pictures with plane shapes

The student have been exploring shapes and worked with a partner to make a picture. Using the same 8 shapes each group came up with very different pictures. Their creativity led to endless designs!