At the end of the day, as we are packing up, I ask the students to decide on ONE memory that they want to keep of our day. After we all agree on one memory, I record our decision on a small note and drop it into our Class Memory Jar. Today we could not decide upon just one event! Apparently, it was an amazing day. The first thing mentioned was that we had 15 minutes of GOLDEN time. "15 minutes?", you must be wondering, "How on earth did they earn 15 minutes of Golden time?" Well, 5 minutes was earned by the most remarkable display of self-control and listening that I have ever witnessed during our first time EVER in the library as First Graders! Even Mrs. Gregory was so amazed at our ability to sit still, listen to the lesson and participate in the discussion. Another 5 minutes was earned as we were returning to our classroom and MR. GAGNE told us we were doing an incredible job walking in the hallway! THAT NEVER HAPPENS... but it did ToDAY! The last 5 minutes was earned for dead brilliant SuperStar behavior in the cafeteria. Everyone sat in their seats with their knees under the table and just talked to their shoulder buddies for the entire 30 minutes!!! Trust me, they EARNED those 15 minutes.
Another favorite memory was our FIRST TIME IN OUR SCHOOL LIBRARY!!!! Oh my goodness. I have never had a class so eager to go to the library before. They were disappointed that they couldn't check out books yet, but they did a beautiful job thanking Mrs. Gregory for the library lesson. We learned to treat our books just like babies. We would never eat over a baby and we won't eat with our books close by. We'd never let a dog or another baby chew on a baby and we won't let that happen to our books! We won't take our library books in the bathtub or shower-- even though Mom sometimes give babies a bath. And we'd never play tug o' war with a baby and we won't with a book. We saw damaged books from students who didn't follow the rules and we were morbidly fascinated by the destruction of some library books. AND we learned the Booky Looky song that we are going to sing in our classroom. It's about using our shelf markers properly and you sing it to the tune of "Hokey Pokey". F-U-N!!
We also got our FIRST GOLD STAR!!!! YAY, Riley!! What a wonderful display of respect and patience he demonstrated for all of us as he waited for another student to finish the informal alphabet test I was giving. We were all SOOOO proud that we gave him a firecracker clap!
And last but not least... we are learning about tools in Science and we got to use magnifying lenses in class today. WOW!! They were fired up about using those things! It was so fun to watch. Mrs. Siegel, our principal, walked into our classroom in the middle of our lesson to join in the learning party. Of course, we were pretty excited {translation: LOUD} as we were using our science tools so maybe she really wanted to find out why we were so "excited" about learning...
Can I even tell you how much fun I had teaching today??? It was a five star day for me as well!
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