Happy Holidays

I wanted to take a little time to wish everyone a very Happy Holidays! It is a joy to be able to share each and everyday with your child. I am very luck to have such as fantastic 1st grade class. I love each of them dearly. We have made so much growth from the beginning of the year until now. It is truly unbelievable. I can't wait to see what 2012 has in store for our classroom. I know that we will continue to make huge gains.

I also wanted to thank everyone for all that you do for our classroom. I am just as lucky to have you as parents as I am to have your children in my classroom. Support at home is very important for students to be successful. Without your loving and caring support at home they wouldn't be making the growth that they have made.

Thank you to all my 1st grade families. Enjoy the time off with your kids. I can't wait to see them back here on January 3rd! It will be fun to hear all about their break!

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas Party Pictures

Thank you all the wonderful parents who helped plan and supply everything for our party! We sure had a fun afternoon.

Christmas Concert Pictures

RIF Pictures

Performance Today

WOW! The kids did a fantastic job today!! I was so impressed with the kids. I will post the video soon.

Show time!

Don't forget about our performance today!! We will be on stage in our classroom at 12:15!! Hope to see you then!

Your Invited!

Please join us for our Holiday Readers Theater Performance! We will be performing on Monday, December 19 at 12:15 in our classroom! We have been practicing really hard. Hopefully you can make it. If you are unable to attend, do not worry! I will be videotaping it and posting on here! :)

Hope to see everyone on Monday!!

Summary of our day

Our day was packed with different activities. After completing our normal morning routine of SMART and calendar we got started with our Word Journeys rotations. The kids practice identifying the headers and sorting the words into the correct place. The two other rotations were writing for the final time in their November journal and creating a strand of Christmas lights.

The Christmas lights activity required the students to spell out their name. The wrote one letter on each light bulb. Then on the opposite side of their letter they had to write a word that started with the same letter as their name. The word had to described the holiday season or winter. An example might be for the letter E some kids wrote elves. We had a very large variety of holiday words. It seemed like the kids really enjoyed this activity. They are already hanging brightly in our room. The kids thought it was so cool when they came in from recess and found their lights' hanging on the ceiling! :)

Another holiday activity that we continued to work on today was called "Sharing in Christmas Joy." We divided into groups of 4. Each student had a piece of paper and were told to draw a holiday picture. After a few minutes they passed their picture on to another member of the group. Then that person continued to add details to the picture. We continued this process until all members of the group had a chance to add to each others picture. The students then had time to add more details to their picture and color. Today we did a writing about the picture that their groups created. There are really neat pictures and very creative writings. I can't wait until we finish this project.

During math we continued to work on problem solving. Today our problem was about the Polar Express. The students had to figure out how many seats were on the train if there are two rows and ten seats in each row. It was unbelievable how the students found the answers to this question.

We also found time to start our Holiday Readers Theater! The kids are thrilled to be doing another play. We had done one for Thanksgiving and they LOVED it so I planned another one for Christmas. They do a very nice job with this!

Football Team Send Off Pep Rally

All Elementary students will be participating in a pep rally to honor the Indians Football team on Friday, November 18th at 8:30 in the High School gym. Students are encouraged to be on time as we will start walking there beginning at 8:20. Students arriving tardy may not have an opportunity to attend.

Elementary students are looking forward to showing their school spirit at this exciting time. Go Indians!

No School Monday, November 14

There will be no school on Monday, November 14th! The Spirit Lake football team will be playing in the state semifinals in the dome in Cedar Falls. Good luck to the football team and GO INDIANS!

The make up day will be on January 3rd!!

Book Fair Results

Thank you for all of the donations for the Coin Collection that we did during the book fair. Our class was the winning class out of the first grade. We get to spend $25 to get additional books for our classroom! We were also lucky enough to win the BINGO game. Our class got the book Bad Kitty Meets the Baby. What a wonderful book fair we had. Thanks to everyone who helped put it on. It was outstanding.

Bank Midwest Trip

Dear Parents,

The first grade classes will be traveling to Bank Midwest Thursday, Nov. 3rd. We will be accepting a gift of $250.00. This money will be used as a learning tool to show the benefits of saving. The money will be allowed to earn interest until they are Seniors. The class will then choose a charity to donate the money to. While there, we will tour the bank, sing songs and learn about saving money.

First Grade Teachers

Halloween Video

Happy Halloween

We will have our classroom Halloween party from 12:30-1:30 on Monday. Right away in the morning we will have a costume parade around the school. It should be a lot of fun.

We would like to wish the Spirit Lake football team the best of luck! Mrs. Naatjes' 1st graders are cheering for you! GO INDIANS!!

Start Somewhere Walk for Iowa

~Homecoming~

Character Counts

Next week is Character Counts! Week and the theme is “Choose to be Smart”. The student council is sponsoring dress-up days:
 

Monday students do not have school 

Tuesday: Choose to be a Team Player=wear a jersey 

Wednesday: Choose to be Drug Free=wear red 

Thursday: Choose to be a Kid of Character (PreK, TK, K=wear red, 1st=wear orange, 2nd=wear yellow, 3rd=wear green, 4th=wear blue, staff wear purple) 

Friday: Choose to be a Winner=wear red and black
 

Thanks for your support!
Lori Thompson Elementary Guidance Counselor

Ferguson's Field Trip

Tomorrow we will be going on a field trip to Ferguson's. We are going to get a tour and then get a chance to plant a seed. We have just finished planting seeds in our classroom. This will be a great addition to our science in the classroom. Our class will be leaving at 10:00 and returning by 11:15.

Sight Words

I am sending home a red card with a list of sight words on it. Please help your child practice these words. They need to be able to read all the words in less then 45 seconds without any errors.

 THANK YOU! 

Junk Insects

• Click to view my story.
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Please turn up your volume to listen to our class tell about their junk insects that they created! All of them are SO creative and very different. It was so much fun to see what the kids came up with.

Calling all cans

I am looking for tin cans to use in our classroom. The type of cans I am looking for is like soup cans, vegetable cans or any other type of can. We will be using them to hold our supplies at our table spots. If anyone has cans that they can send in, I would really appreciate it. If you use a can within the next couple weeks PLEASE send it to school.

THANK YOU!

I Went Walking

Here is the keynote we made. Each student went outside and took a picture of one thing that they saw. When then learned how to put it into a keynote and wrote about what we saw. It went along with our story we read. The story was called I Went Walking.

Click on the link below to view the our keynote! :)

I Went Walking by Mrs. Naatjes' Class

Fishing Day Pictures

Seed Day

The first grade classes are beginning a science unit on seeds and plants.  The first project will involve developing a collection of various seeds to investigate and display.
Monday, October 3 is Seed Day.  The students have been asked to bring seeds to school.  Please help your child with this homework.  Thank you!

Places to look:
In a park or along the bike path
In your yard or garden
In your kitchen

Fishing Day!

Happy fishing day! We will be gone today from 9:30-10:45!! Hopefully we have great luck and catch lots of fish.

Picture Re-takes

Elementary picture Re-takes will be Wednesday, October 19th beginning at 8:30!

Fishing Day has been changed!

With the upcoming weather forecast, they have decided to postpone our fishing day. We will now be  fishing on Wednesday, September 28th!!

Fishing Day!

We are going fishing!

      Next Tuesday & Wednesday, September 20 & 21, the elementary will be going fishing. Please dress appropriately for the weather. Layer for any changes in temperature and wear sturdy walking shoes.

      Our class will be fishing on Wednesday from 9:30 to 10:45. Parents interested in joining us can meet us at the Fish Hatchery. See you then!

Mrs. Naatjes

Open House

Spirit Lake Elementary will be having an Open House on Thursday night! It is from 5:00-6:00. This will be a great chance for you to stop in the room to see all of the stuff we have done already this year! If you can, please make time to stop in and see what your child has done this school year.

Iowa vs Iowa State Graphing Activity

We are learning how to make a graph and a table in math. On Friday, the students got to choose between Iowa or Iowa State. They had to pick which team they wanted to win the game on Saturday. We then colored the chosen teams picture and made a large graph. We found out that 16 kids wanted Iowa and only 5 wanted Iowa State. We talked about which team had the most votes, the least votes and the difference between to the two. The students had a great time doing this activity. After a fantastic game,  it turned out the Cyclone fans were very happy!!! :)

Butterflies

We had a fun and very informative morning. Charles came to visit. He taught us more about insects. We learn a lot more about caterpillars and butterflies

Pictures

Please remember that our school picture day will be on Thursday! We will be taking the pictures in the morning. :) If you would like to order pictures please send back the order form to school by Thursday.

First Day!

We are having so much fun on the first day. We have been very busy already. We got unpacked and organized, have shared what we did this summer, learned about the classroom and learned how we are going to be bucket filler! The kids are already doing a very nice job being positive and helping others out. In math, we did a graphing activity and found out that most kids arrived to school today in a car. I can already tell we are going to have a fantastic year!

Welcome to 1st Grade

Welcome to 1st grade. I am so excited to start the new school year. I will use this site to keep you up to date about what is happening in the classroom. I will use this to post the snack and water calendar and star of the week schedule. I will also put pictures of the students up. If you ever have any questions, comments or concerns, please let me know. Lets work together to make this the best year possible!