Classroom News

Welcome to our Classroom News page!

I hope you will return each month to  see what we are up to. It is the place to find out what we did the previous month and get an idea of what will be happening in the month to come. I will leave the previous month's news up in case you are a new visitor, and hope you will return often and see what we're about!

February

February was just as exciting as January with lots of things happening all month long! It was Catholic Schools Week to start, and each day was filled with something special. We had Pajama Day on Monday, school tours on Tuesday, and a beautiful school Liturgy on Wednesday evening when six of our classmates participated in a liturgical dance during Mass. On Thursday we dressed in yellow with our Buddy Grade and worked together to write thank you notes to all the people who support our school. Friday was special because we wore our favorite team colors and shirts, brought a can of soup to donate to a local food cupboard and had an enjoyable movie treat that afternoon. After that week it was back to business. We had a special visit from Kids On the Block, a puppet show that really taught us about healthy snacks and caring for our teeth. That was a huge success and we are "swishing and swallowing" after snack now to help keep our teeth healthy. The next week was highlighted by learning lots about love, being peacemakers...you can never learn enough about that...and exchanging valentines and snacking on fresh strawberries dipped in whipped cream! We ended the week with a great Winter Fun Day...thank you Coach!Then it was on to a week of vacation, only to return to the 100th day of school the first day back. We spent that morning doing great learning and fun activities. We graphed M&Ms, made 100 sticker books, strung necklaces of groups of tencolors of Froot Loops, and took our clipboards and traveled the school to find 100 words we could read! We built sculptures of 100 linking blocks then voted on our favorites, and tried (unsuccessfully) to grab exactly 100 pennies. A good time was had by all and it was unanimous that 100 IS A LOT! When we returned to school we began the serious learning about Jesus' Lenten journey and how we are asked to return our hearts to God during this time. We are trying to follow Jesus for these forty days before Easter.February with its abundance of "heartfelt" activites was a good month filled with the kinds of events and activities that remind us of who we are, and that as we learn the three Rs we are also learning about the love Jesus has for us on our own journey each day.

January

This year just gets better and better! January was filled with great things in our classroom. We opened our classroom store (by voting of course) and it is named The Chicken Wing Grocery! We made store departments and priced items. The students have been working with dimes and pennies and purchasing items at the store several times a week. It is a great way to learn about shopping and I encourage you to ask your child questions as you navigate through your grocery store in the coming weeks.  We began our unit on Living things and will be learning about animal groups as well as plants for the next few months. (Moms...don't ask too many questions.)

We have been doing some story mapping and wrote our first books complete with a Dedication page, and About the Author information. The students loved it and we will be doing lots more of that from now until June with some publishing going on too. I continue to encourage the students to use what we are learning in Reading and Phonics to sound out words they do not know how to spell, but I will be looking for spelling words to be written correctly. In addition, our spelling tests will contain two previous week's words. We are also working on fluency as we read and adding expression as we become more aware of what punctuation marks tell us to do with our voices. It is truly exciting to see the students grow as the have more and more "Ah ha" moments. Thank you for reading faithfully at night, and encouraging the challenge of AR reading.

In Science we are beginning units on plants and animals. We had a special visit from Jeff the Reptile Guy who as a previous teacher, infused the excitement of seeing all these creatures for real with the education of some pretty creepy crawly things. I thoroughly enjoyed the turtle races myself, and trust me, the kids loved it all.

While learning about Martin Luther King Day, we began a book on Peace and what we can do in our immediate world to become peacemakers. It has been very inspiring to watch the students realize that it does depend us you and how we treat those around us. We will be working on a Feelings Formula as we begin our Lenten Journey in February to become closer to Jesus.      Peace as always.

Tune in next month for another visit to Mrs.Scahill's Classroom! 

December

December was a fantastic month in our classroom. We made Christmas decorations, went on field trips to celebrate the season, and did lots of nice "elfie" things as we got ready to welcome the baby Jesus into our hearts once again. We had a special visit from St. Nick as well as Santa Claus this month.

Our Christmas play with the second grade was a wonderful experience. We were the chorus and the second graders were the actors. We got to see firsthand how it all comes together as we performed for the school, our parents, and loved ones.

We went to the Planetarium to see the Jack Frost Laser Christmas performance and it was  breathtaking. The "oohs and ahs" of all the students in the pitch black of the wintry scene in the Planetariunmlet us know it was a huge success.

Just before vacation, we had a very exciting birthday party for Jesus, and celebrated with party hats and birthday cake. We sang with the rest of the school at a very special Prayer Service on the last day of school and went off with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

It was a great month!

November

November was a great month in Mrs. Scahill’s first grade as we gave thanks for all the things we have in our lives as well as for the Pilgrims who bravely set out to find religious freedom, and the Indians who became their friends and joined them for the first feast of Thanksgiving. We learned even more about giving thanks as we studied about God’s love for us and for all the wonderful things he gave us when he created our world. We made turkeys with our fourth grade buddies and wrote things we are thankful for on their colorful feathers. We watched a movie about the legend of the Indian Paintbrush (flower in the desert), and made our own buckskin designs with Indian symbols. The highlight of the month was a special prayer service and delicious feast with our first grade partners. They dressed up as the Pilgrims and we dressed up as the Indians. We had great fun decorating our costumes and thoroughly enjoyed the celebration.

We also went on a field trip to Nazareth to watch a play, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was fascinating to find out how the actors dressed in black and manipulated spongy rubber foam puppets painted with fluorescent paint. They used a black light on the puppets and they seemed to glow. It was nice that they took time to explain how they did their parts and they even answered some questions for us.

God Drop is busy visiting the home of the class God Drop chosen each week.  The students are writing about their weekend adventure and sharing it with the class the following week.

It was a great month!

October

What a busy and fun month we had! We've gotten used to the classroom routines and have gotten to have some free time to work and play with the classroom activities. Be sure to look at our picture section to see pictures of what we're up to.

In math we've been working with linking blocks to learn various concepts. We've been graphing and designing colorful pattern blocks. We're learning about adding and subtracting, weighing things to learn about lighter and heavier objects, and we are beginning to learn about counting money.

We've been finding out all about school, the people who are here to help us learn, and the rules we need to follow to stay safe. The West Webster firemen were wonderful when they came to tell us all about fire safety and what we can do in first grade to be prepared. They gave us some really neat pencils that change color with the heat from our hands.

Mrs. Wagner took us  on a tour of our church and told us some very special things about the church and St. Rita. It helps us realize how wonderful it is to be here and learn about God's love for us. When we learned about Creation we made pictures out of shapes to create our own "somethings" out of nothing. Every one was different from the next and looked great. We learned about praising God's goodness and made and decorated tambourines. Mr. Fredericks let us bring them to Music where he helped us use them to accompany the songs we are learning.

Halloween activities during October were a big success. We hung ghosts from the wires in our room, made owls for the bulletin board outside, and colored spooky pictures to decorate our room. We illustrated a book, Where Is My Pumpkin, to show that we understand position words like above, below, under, up, and down, by drawing around a pumpkin already on each page. We read a story about Olivia the Witch who didn't want to be a bad witch and began to design hats by throwing things into her pot and pulling out colorful and happy hats. We designed our own hats and wrote our ingredient lists for each one. Our Halloween party was super with lots of activites and games. We made necklaces, skeletons, bats, bags and even played Pin the Wart On the Witch's Nose. Spooky Halloween music played throughout the month.

Socks, our classroom mascot this year even got dressed for Halloween in his mask and special pumpkin feed bag. His little friend God Drop has been keeping our classroom God Drops company throughout each week. God Drop gets to go home on Friday with the classroom God Drop chosen that week, then comes back Monday with a story about his adventures over the weekend. Classroom God Drops read the story to the class.

It was another great month!

September

September was a great month!!! 28 bright and smiling faces filled the classroom, ready to learn and work together all day.

We started out learning about ourselves and how special God made each of us. We made "All About Me" posters to give to our parents on Curriculum Night. It was fun to look at all the posters and see how unique and different we all are, but also how much we are alike.

In Science we began our unit on the seasons and the weather and were treated to lots of different kinds of weather all month long. We will be tracking the changes in the weather next week.

In Reading we've been reviewing letter sounds and blending more and more words each day. We are reading! Some students have started earning AR points already.

Math is great fun. We are using lots of manipulatives and everyone says they even like the homework!!!

We learned about Johnny Appleseed and made apple glyphs. We learned a poem about two red apples smiling don on us. We made a tree with apples that have springs on them!

Abby was our first God Drop chosen this year. A small stuffed horse named "God Drop" sat on her desk all week. His job will be to watch our God Drop each week as he or she lets us all see how joyful he or she is as they show kindness to others. "God Drop" even went home for the weekend with Abby. He took his bed and special food and blanket. Abby wrote about their adventures and read them to the class on Monday. ("God Drop" really liked the Grape Festival in Naples!)

It was a great month!

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