US Symbols

At the end of the school year our Social Studies Unit was US Symbols and Monuments.  My class was very excited to learn about our country.  I found a great set of books to get the kids excited about reading about our country.  My class loved the books.  They are just right for first grade reading.  One of the books we focused on was The Statue of Liberty.  Afterwards I had the students do a direct drawing of the Statue of Liberty that I found on Pinterest.  We had a wonderful discussion about buildings we would find in the city.  I like the picture on the right somehow the US Bank has a cross on the top.  It is so cute that my students have no understanding of the division of religion and state.  

 And now for my favorite picture....I told the students to draw buildings of places they like to go.....the little red building is HOOTERS.  How many cute little Catholic boys know about Hooters? 

Dear First Graders......

Dear First Grader,

In first grade you will learn Social Studies that's when you learn about people, places and presidents.  You will also learn about religion.  That's when you learn about God, Jesus and saints.  Handwriting is

another thing we do in first grade.  In math we solve hard problems.  You will learn about responsibility.  A responsibility is something you have to do by yourself.

From, Ellie

At the end of each school year one of my last writing assignments is to write a letter to the incoming first graders.  We go back over the pictures from our school year time line as talk about the different things we learned throughout the year. Throughout the discussion we also include things that are the same about kindergarten so that we know what not to repeat in our letters, for example gym class or lunch. In addition I remind the students to use their class dictionary to look up the hard words and sound out the new words and give it a try in their dictionaries.  

Above is just one letter from this year.  There were several cute letters.  However, I liked this one because we discussed a lot this year about what it means to be responsible, apparently it home with Ellie.  

Dad of the Year Book

I spent the whole weekend organizing for Mother's Day this week.  I purchased a great book from Mrs. Jump for my little ones to make for Mother's Day.    It reminded me of the father's day book I have my little ones make.  It is an idea that my little boys made years ago and I added to it and made it more of a book.  Oh, and I went to school today and my friend told me that Mother's day is next week.  Yeah!  I will be ahead of schedule.!!!

Click Here if you would like a copy and please leave a comment and or feedback.  Thanks,