How is it already October?? Now that the school year has gotten into the swing of things, time seems to just fly by.

One of my favorite things in the world is handwritten letters. I love the personal touch they add. From the time they took to write the letter, to getting to see their handwriting, to the stationary, the sweet words in the letter - there is so much I love about them! This year, I decided to write letters to each family in my class. I've always thought about doing this. It seems like our conferences, which are in October, don't happen until the school year has been going for a while and I really wanted a way to let the parents know how things are going before then. 

I wasn't sure if all the effort would be that worth it in the end. For me, it was nice to reflect on each child. For the parents, they LOVED this! I got so many nice notes from the parents about how much the letters meant to them. I will definitely be doing this every year from now on! 

My absolute favorite thing from last week was our problem based learning activity that occurred in my classroom.

First thing Monday morning, one of my first graders walked in the door and said to me "I have an idea." She then shared with me how she wanted to collect stuffed animals so give to kids in Houston and the Texas coast who lost theirs due to flooding from Hurricane Harvey.  #bless

I was so on-board with making this 6 year old's sweet idea come to fruition. After she shared her idea with the class & told them what had happened in those areas last weekend, all of the students wanted to do something - even expanding her original idea to include food, clothes, & other necessities! 

I was truly amazed by what I was seeing naturally unfold before my eyes. As I stood there I watched twenty 6 year olds hear about a problem, talk with each other about how they can help, come up with quick questions they had for me, and then jump to the next step of what to do to help. During the whole project I was simply the scriber for the class. 

Here is how the project unfolded:

A student shared her idea & what had happened in parts of Texas and other students said they wanted to help too.


The students commented that they didn't know anyone specifically in Houston.


I shared with them that there are some organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. that help raise money & donations for people in need.  As a class we researched the different sites to see what kind of items they accepted. 

We talked about needs vs wants. Which is why certain organizations ask for certain types of items.


The class wrote an e-mail asking for permission to do this type of project.


Behind the scenes: I found out some logistical things to make this happen. There was already a project that had been started by our PTA to collect the necessities for Hurricane Harvey flood victims for the week so I asked if we could partner with them. Then I kept calling groups to see who could benefit from stuffed animals since it was a unique item that most organizations don't accept. 


Side note: One of my family friends was helping me in calling organizations. When she called the Red Cross & told them about the project my students had come up the Red Cross volunteer said she was so sorry she couldn't take the items but wanted to help the students so she proceeded to pray on the phone that the idea the sweet students had would come to fruition to help comfort those children in need. So incredibly kind.


They got a letter back (I cannot tell you how exciting this was for them!)
To partner with our PTA, the students spoke on the morning announcements telling the campus about the collection each morning this week.


Some more behind the scenes happenings: I found out the stuffed animals had to be new. I didn't want to burden parents with having to go do "another errand" or feeling like they had to do something at all. So I wrote an e-mail to the parents telling them about this project & how it came to be. The responses I received were amazing! The parents loved this and really wanted to help make it happen. So I told them that if they wanted their child to participate, we could all do a trip to the local toy store and purchase some stuffed animals. They were so generous & all wanted to participate. 


While the students were purchasing their stuffed animals, they had to decide if they wanted to buy several smaller ones to help comfort more kids or one bigger one, they learned about "change" and why they get money back after making a purchase, they commented about how "warm & fuzzy" they felt after buying the animal & putting it in a bag for animals to give to children. As a class, they collected FIFTY animals give help comfort other children! 


While my end goal was for the children to take a trip to a shelter to  help pass out the stuffed animals, I learned that the shelters prefer to not have a ton of random people showing up with stuff and that it is actually more helpful to give items to a specific organization to sort everything & deliver. I'm so thankful that Austin Disaster Relief was able to take the stuffed animals and pass them out to children at the shelters to comfort them.  

It was such an amazing project and I cannot get over how impressed I am with this class! What sweet first graders to come up with these ideas totally on their own, think of what needs to happen for their idea to occur, and then work to make it happen! 

With this group of first graders as our future, I know we are in good hands!

Just Like Me!

During our morning meeting this morning, I LOVED our morning meeting activity. Some background: Yesterday, we made mini-versions of ourselves and learned that no 2 people are alike and that our differences make each of us special! So this morning during our meeting, I had the students go around in a circle and share something that made them special. For example: I have 1 sister. Then everyone who that statement was true for too would sit up, point to themselves, & say "Just Like Me!" Literally, such a sweet way to start the morning! 

My next favorite were these scientists we made. I always wish my science lessons had a craft to go with it to work on those fine motor skills.  Well after reading about sweet Ada Twist, we talked about what a scientist does. The students then made themselves as scientists and wrote a wondering they have. 

DISASTER MASTER

So after lunch, the students came into the classroom to a HUGE disaster. Tables were flipped over, books were knocked out everywhere, papers were just thrown about, all of our math materials were dumped over, etc. We soon discovered that our class mascot Stripes, had had some fun while we were at lunch.

We decided we needed to make some classroom agreements so that everyone would know what the expectations were and we wouldn't have this happen again.  The students were more than happy to do this as they did not want to pick up another mess left by Stripes, or anyone else for that matter. They even signed their names at the bottom of the agreement to make sure of it ;)  

Bonus: At some point today, one of my firsties raised his hand several times & asked several questions in a row. After asking them he commented loudly to himself "I sure ask a lot of questions." #selfawareness #bless