PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST

The month of December is all about Habit 3: Put First Things First.  Or in kid friendly language, "Work First, Then Play".

 

Thank you parents for bringing the habits into your home. 

I love watching the students blossom into leaders. 

If you are interested in some more activities to use at home, click here for a parent guide.

 

We celebrated the habit by discussing our "Big Rocks vs. Little Rocks". 

Your "Big Rocks" are the things that matter most in life such as family, school, health, homework, pets, religion, etc. 

Your "Little Rocks" are the things you like to do but aren't priorities such as videogames, going to a friend's house, watching TV, etc.

 

We tried to fill a bucket by putting all of our little rocks in first, and then filling the bucket with our big rocks.

We quickly realized this would not work.

So the students had to figure out that if you fill your bucket first with your "Big Rocks" all the "Little Rocks" fit right in around the big ones.

This shows the students that when you "Put First Things First" that there is always time for fun and you get done everything that you need to do.

 

Last week, we had to "Put First Things First" by practicing daily for our Holiday Music Concert.

In case you missed it, our students looked so great!

{Can't they just dress like that every single day?}

 

 

We've also "Put First Things First" by working hard to achieve our attendance goal. 
Each day, our goal is to have 2 or less students absent! 
We can't learn if we aren't here!
Each day we meet our goal, we put up a letter of L-E-A-D-E-R-S out in the hall.
Once we completely spell the word L-E-A-D-E-R-S, we have an At-Ten-Dance Party [get it attendance?].  So basically, at 10 a.m. that day we stop and bust it down for 5 minutes.
The students love it.

I am SO excited to announce that we have made our attendance goal every week, which also means our classroom is the attendance leaders of the school.
So we earned the reward of fun drinks & fancy straws!

We "Put First Things First" by completing our book reports on time!
Our November Book Jackets were fabulous!

[I also have to mention their "leader voices" as I like to call them while they present.  We don't even have a need for a microphone anymore because they sound like they are using one!]

Lastly, we have "Put First Things First" by preparing for our Rounding Test. 
I love that they LOVE to do math.
I hope that never changes.

SO MUCH TO BE THANKFUL FOR!

We had a wonderful {and short} Thanksgiving week in the classroom!

It was so nice to hear all the things the students were thankful for and of course, I had to tell each and every one of them why I am thankful for them!

I also had to snap this photo of the kids in the leaves at recess and hopefully they showed you this at home.

I mean seriously, how adorable are they?

We made math turkeys this week!  

What a fun way to review place value.

Students had to pick a number in the thousands place or higher.

Each feather includes: expanded form, word form, standard form, and a place value chart showing number disks.

We also had two Skype in the Classroom lessons this week and last.

First we met The Digits!  They are an intergalactic math rock band from a far away galaxy.  They taught us math for the day!  How cool!

We are so excited because they are sending our class a CD too!

Next, we Skyped with Paul the Night Zookeeper.  He is an author from the UK.  

Mrs. Zarate's class joined us for a creating writing lesson.  

Paul got us using our imagination so we could develop creative stories afterwards.

It is so important that as we begin informational writing, we don't lose our creativity!  

This lesson surely sparked it!

Lastly, congratulations to all of the students who earned awards at our Sharpen the Saw Assembly!  I was overwhelmed by the amount of parents that took time out of their busy work day to join us!  It really means so much to our students.

And thank you to all of you implementing the 7 Habits in your home as well.  

We can encourage the students to be leaders during the school day but it impacts their lives so much more when leadership is immersed in their entire life. 

Here is a review of the first two habits we've studied at school. 

 

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend,

 

NOVEMBER BY SUBJECT

I enjoyed meeting all of you at Parent-Teacher Conferences last week!
The students really enjoyed explaining their progress in the classroom.  
Taking charge of their learning is all part of our Leader in Me Program and I love seeing our students blossom into leaders!

These past few weeks have been packed.
We've been working on Persuasive Letter Writing and we've been reading persuasive texts as well as identifying their audience, issue, and evidence (reasons). 
And of course, sharing them to the class! 

In math, we've been working on rounding our numbers using a vertical number line.

In social studies, we've been studying land and water features present in the United States.

We also celebrated Veteran's Day by writing wonderful THANK YOU letters to our deployed troops.  We sent them to Operation Gratitude.  Find out more about them here.

I hope you join us tomorrow for our first Sharpen the Saw Assembly from 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Many of our students are earning awards for Leadership, Attendance, and Honor Roll! 
We have many exciting things planned!
See you then!

MICHIGAN SCIENCE CENTER RECAP

Our first field trip of the year was a success!
I am [so] impressed with the way our students acted like leaders and represented Hamilton both on the bus and inside the MSC.

We began our day in the Toyota Engineering Show. 
Although photography wasn't allowed inside of the show, I have to mention how much fun it has been to listen to the students talk about becoming an engineer since our field trip.
{Maybe it has something to do with the interactive seats in the show that sprayed water at us?}
Either way, it is great to hear that science is cool!

Next, we watched To the Arctic from the IMAX Dome Theatre.

What a beautiful film that takes you on a journey into the lives of a mother polar bear and her cubs as they navigate the Arctic wilderness.
The footage was absolutely c-a-p-t-i-v-a-t-i-n-g and I'm thrilled the students were able to experience it.
[Again, no photos were allowed!]

After lunch, we were finally off to explore all the hands-on exhibits of the Michigan Science Center.
The students had a BLAST and I was able to snap a few pictures...

And finally...a group picture to close out a wonderful day!

 

How lucky am I that I get to be with these kids everyday?

BULLYING ASSEMBLY AND PUMPKINS GALORE!

We had a wonderful assembly last week with Corey "Basketball" Jones talking to the students about self-esteem and anti-bullying.  

The students absolutely loved how "cool" he was.

He had lots of tricks up his sleeve and many of our students went home with prizes.

Here is a sneak peek:

Halloween Spirit:
To get into the spirit of Halloween, the students have been decorating their pumpkins like our globe.  
This activity has really enforced the location of the continents and their relative size in comparison to the oceans. 

 Aren't they impressive?