A Look at Soil

Today we explored potting soil and sandy soil. We used maginfying glasses to see the soil, our noses to smell the soil, and our hands to touch the soil. We wrote down our findings, then created a Venn diagram to discuss the diferences between sandy soil and potting soil.

We had Chinese today. After Chinese we had our delicious snack of red grapes. They were tasty.

Ayanna, Kavon, Destiney, and Shelley used powerpoint to create a talking slide show of their spelling words. They sound great!

Ayanna, Destiney, and Shelley have been working hard with Mrs. Waller on reading a poem, "The Picnic" I am excited to hear it tomorrow.

It was another great day at Evergreen!

What does it mean to be Cool as a Cucumber?

Our vegetable of the day was cucumbers today. While we were enjoying our delicious snack (definietly not our favorite one so far) Mrs. Birkhead asked what it meant to be cool as a cucumber...many of us didn't know, but we know now! For those of you who don't know it means to be calm in a difficult situation.

We had speech this morning. We read a story and created a collage of things we see in the Woodbury neighborhood. Then we went to music. Mrs. Birkhead and Kavon modeled how to buddy read, and read a story about Vegetable Soup. It made us very hungry.

Thanks to Billy for writing the next part of the blog.
We played tag at recess today. I was a playground champion. We learned about neighborhoods.

After lunch we had math and writing. We wrote about cucumbers and neighborhoods in our journals today.

A Plum Day

Plums
They are sour
They are sweet
A juicy tasty treat
But don't eat the pit because Mrs. Birkhead will have a fit!


Today we enjoyed plums for our snack. Marissa loved her plum! We wrote in our journals at the end of the day about plums, and drew pictures.

We spent most of the day on reading and math. We hope to get to science tomorrow. We love to get on the computers, and thank Mrs. Dougherty for showing us Zoo Zillions last week.

Ayanna, Destiney, and Shelley read a poem about a picnic, drew a picture, and wrote a story about going on a picnic today. We can't wait to see their work.

Tag seems to be the class favorite at recess. Miss Denise continues to compliment us on our behavior, and has awarded playground champion slips to many of us. Congratulations to Marissa and Ayanna who both received free snacks today for their great work on the playground.

This Friday is a School wide Friday Fun Block Party. We hope we can all participate!

Wednesday

It was another exciting day in Room 9. Shelley, Marissa, and Jalen really liked learning dances in gym class today. They are practicing for the dance on September 25! You can expect to see some great dancers! We have learned the Chicken Dance, The Hokey Pokey, and the YMCA.

Mrs. Birkhead introduced students to some new websites today, and each student had the opportunity to try them out. I think the favorite website was when each student made a pumpkin. Destiney and Ayanna really liked the All About Me part of the website, and Joey created his own calendar to mark his birthday!

Ayanna learned how to write two digit numbers in math today. Kavon liked playing games in COW today.

We have had several playground champions the last couple days, let's keep up the great behavior!

Remember tonight is Back to School Night for Parents. Please remind them to come visit Mrs. Birkhead and our classroom!

Quite a Busy Tuesday

Tuesday began with our first speech lesson. We read a story about firefighters then discussed people who help us in the community. We traced our hand, chose a person who helps us in the community, and wrote or drew five facts about that person. Then, we had Chinese. Guess what? We had 8 playground champions at lunch today. Some students are on their way to a free snack! We had COW again today, and we finished writing our goals for the school year. We added our picture and a border. Our goals look great and will hang in the hallway!
Ayanna really enjoyed our small group math lesson today because we were counting so high! All the way to 510! WOW!!! Jalen learned to write his name in Chinese!

Our First Time with the C.O.W.

C.O.W. - Computers on Wheels

We are scheduled to use the laptops every afternoon this week. Today we learned the basics - how to carry the laptop, how to log on the computers, and how to type our goals. We spent so much time on the computers that we didn't have time to do our usual shared writing about our day.

We will be sure to write again tomorrow...maybe we'll even include what we learned with Mrs. Dougherty!

Let's go Eagles!

More First Day pictures

First Days of School...

Sarah made a Special Visit!

It was another exciting day at Evergreen Elementary School. We were sad to hear that Mrs. Waller wasn't feeling well, and hope she feels better. Mrs. Majors helped us in our classroom today, and Destiney really enjoyed working with her. Mr. S taught us how to dance today. Marissa really liked dancing to the Alphabet Song, and Jalen liked the Chicken Dance. Joey remembered that our Pre-School buddies stopped by today on a tour of our school. We couldn't believe how small they were!

Sarah, our basketball playing puppet stopped by to visit us today. She reminded us about how we should play on the playground, and reminded us about tattletailing. We hope Sarah doesn't need to come back to talk about rules.

Friday Fun! We know if we receive 4 "GREEN" days we allowed to participate in Friday Fun. Today Friday Fun involved playing board games with Mrs. Platt's class, and eating popcorn and pretzels!

Our first student of the week is Kavon! We interviewed him and learned many interesting facts about him. Make sure to look at our bulletin board dedicated to Kavon for the week.

Our first Happy Sack winner was Ayanna. Our names go in the Happy Sack when we are caught doing good deeds.

Proud to be an American!

We made American flag pictures this morning to remember the people who died in the terror attack, and this afternoon we wrote in our journals about people who keep us safe. Jalen and Kavon both thought firemen keep us safe. Destiney wrote about policemen. Thank you to all the people who keep us safe every day.

Today we made models of land and water with soil and water. We made hills with our soil, then drew a picture of our model. Ayanna really enjoyed this experiment.

We made our first visit to the library today! Joey was very excited about picking a book from the library.

Since it was such a nice day we took a short break to play on the playground and the swings. Shelley, Marissa, Ayanna, and Destiney collected some rocks outside for science.

Everyone learned a new math game today! We are still learning the rules and routines of our classroom, but we do know it is important to respect each other and keep eachother safe.

Let's continue to be the best we can be!

Singing About Science

We had such a busy day today that we didn't have too much time to share our highlights from the day!
We began the morning in literacy centers, then we went to music class. When we came back from music Mrs. Birkhead taught us a new song about the Earth...now we know the Earth is made of land and water! Mrs. Breland heard our voices from the hallway, so she stopped in to sing with us! Billy even asked her to sing our Earth song by herself!!! We were so impressed with Mrs. Breland's singing voice, and hope she will visit again soon.
After lunch we worked on math problems, which was Destiney's favorite part of the day.
The real reason we did not spend too much time on our blog today was because we were brainstorming our goals for the school year. Marissa hopes to be on a cheerleading team, and Ayanna shared her dream of becoming a painter. Kavon wants to try to complete every homework assignment this year, while Joey wants to be Playground Champion, which reminds me...Congratulations to Marissa! She is our first playground champion.
Tomorrow we will visit the library for the first time! We can't wait to pick out some new books to read!

Mrs. Birkhead's class Welcomes 2 New Students!

Shelley and Marissa are new to our class! We are so excited to have you in our class. We spent the morning at literacy centers, and learning about land, water, and air. We had to stay inside for recess because it was raining. Ayanna, Billy, Ayanna, Kavon, Shelley, and Destiney played Bingo with Mrs. Birkhead and Jalen, Joey, and Marissa played Ice Cream Match up with Ms. Denise.

After lunch we filled out our first reading log, and learned where to store it. We had our first math lesson today! Do you remember what number comes after 99?

One of the highlights of our day was using Mrs. Birkhead's thought bubble. Mrs. Birkhead "jumped" inside our heads and read our minds. She told us it is important to stop and think while we are reading. Destiney, Ayanna, Joey, and Marissa all had a chance to use the thought bubble today, and we all look forward to using the thought bubble in the future.

Jalen really enjoyed reading books today, and many students were able to listen to Thundercake on tape.

It was a great day...we can't wait to get started on reading tomorrow!

Be a Zero Hero!

Today was Ayanna's 8th birthday! She brought pink frosted cupcakes to share with her classmates today. Thanks, Ayanna, for the special treat and Happy Birthday!

We continue to practice our morning procedures, and we are becoming more adjusted to our classroom. This morning we worked in our Handwriting books. Then we went to Chinese where we learned to spell our names!

When we returned from Chinese we created a reading salad together. We learned that REAL READING = Thinking + Reading. We used green leaves for our thoughts and red tomatoes for the words, and we noticed we had many more green leaves (thoughts) than tomatoes (text)

We attended our first assembly today. Mrs. Breland spoke to us about school rules, and our brand new behavior policy. She encouraged us to have zero points. Guess what? Our room still has zero points, and we are working hard so we can participate in the first school wide Friday Fun Activity. Check out the video below, which is about our hero, Zero!

Personal Highlights from Our Day...coming tomorrow morning! I forgot to write this part at school!

Billy began to read The Great Kapok Tree he learned about many animals in the forest, and how an ax can make a gash in a tree.

Our First Friday

Friday, September 5, 2008

We had another spectacular day in Mrs. Birkhead's class. All of our super students completed their homework and were eager to share with the class!

We started our morning by reading our class promise:

We promise to be hard workers and good citizens for the 2008-2009 school year. We will try our best to keep ourselves and our classmates safe. We will show respect by listening , and by keeping our eyes on the person who is speaking. When we sit at our desks we will keep our hands on top of it. We are going to smile everyday and use put-ups, not put-downs. When something happens we will let it go because we know we cannot change the past, but we can change the future. We promise to be the best we can be!

Some highlights from the day...

Joey liked playing on the brand new playground. He climbed up the rock wall and looked through the telescope.

Jalen learned how to find NJ on a map, and all of the students learned Mrs. Birkhead was from Pennsylvania. Jalen also enjoyed independent reading time.

The best part of Ayanna's day was being the line leader.

Ayanna Marrero ate salad, pizza, and strawberry milk for lunch. She loved music class! In fact, everyone in Mrs. Birkhead's class enjoyed singing "The cat came back", "Michael Finigan", and "Whole Wide World." Mrs. Savage complemented the beautiful singing voices of our class.

Kavon learned about the United States of America by looking in his homework book.

Billy read our first blog entry and was excited to see a comment from Mrs. Breland.

Most of our class are Phillies fans...Let's cheer for three wins against the Mets this weekend!

It was a great start to the school year! Enjoy the rainy weekend, and get ready for an exciting Monday in Mrs. Birkhead's class!

Welcome Back!

We had an exciting first day back to school. We spent the morning getting to know our classmates, then went to gym with Mr. S. When we came back from gym we took a star tour of our school. We came across many familiar faces and some new ones too! We learned abour our lunch rules, then read The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane Derolf. We developed classroom rules, and consequences in case we forget to follow our rules. We each had our picture taken with the Cat in the Hat, and and signed up for class jobs. It was quite a busy day, but we are excited to be back at school!
At the end of the day each child shared what they learned...
Destiney - I learned Mrs. Birkhead's name.
Jalen - I learned the rules for outside.
Mrs. Birkhead - I met the Super Seven students in my class
Billy I learned some classroom rules especially no running in the classroom or hallways.
Ayanna - I learned it is important to keep our hands and feet to ourselves.
Ayanna - I learned about our school on the star tour.
Kavon - I learned it is important to be nice to everyone.
Joey - I learned how important it is to try your best.

What a great first day! I can't wait to see what tomorrow has in store for us!

The Night Before School

Twas the Night Before School Starts

~Ron Yorgason

T'was the night before school starts

And all through the place,

Not a smile was seen

On any kid's face.

Our bags were all stuffed

With our notebooks brand new,

And rulers and pencils

With erasers to chew.

Mournfully we All crawled into bed,

Knowing too well That the 'good life' was dead.
Then mom came in whistling And kissed us goodnight,
With a bright cheery voice That didn't seem right.

The night dragged on slowly

I just couldn't sleep,

For fear that my math teacher

Would be a real creep.

Or maybe a bully

Would give me a shove,

Or even more evil things Than I could think of.
When from in the next room There arose such a clamber, My mom yelled, "I'm FREE!" "I'm free 'till next summer!"

This must be a plot

By conspiring moms,

Who just want a break To experience 'calm.'
Oh, must I go through it?! How can I go on? I want to escape Run off to Saigon!

Nine months is too long

To suffer through school The classes so rough

And teachers who're cruel.
"Come Donald! Come Conner! Come Henry VanStation!

Come up to the board, Do your multiplication!"

"And Julie, stop talking! And Jimmy, wake up! And Mary, right now, Don't do your makeup!"
Teachers ever are hounding

They just never quit. You do something wrong,

They go into a fit.

And so every year About this same time, I lie in bed sleepless And just moan and whine.
Until morning comes, And I hear my mom say, "Good luck with your school! And have a nice day!"

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I am so excited to meet you tomorrow! Together we will embark on a learning journey...hold on tight....it's going to be a great ride!