Mary's 60th Birthday Extravaganza!

Last weekend we drove down to Arizona to celebrate my mother in laws 60th birthday. On Saturday we went with Ryan's family to the Renaissance Festival.

It was so much fun!!! We ate yummy food, played fun games, watched some cool shows, and rode on some "man powered" rides.

As we were walking out of the festival, there was this guy standing there holding a rock in one hand and a roll in the other and he was sayind "Rock N' Roll". :)

That night we went to eat at a really yummy Indian restaurant in Gilbert called the Guru Palace. Most of us had never had Indian food before, so it was so much fun to try something new.

Then we came home for some VERY yummy birthday cake that Alicia made special for Mary's birthday. :) Make a wish Mary.

Alicia and Melanie planned ahead of time to spend the night, so we stayed up late and had a really fun slumber party with everybody. :) The next day we had a yummy breakfast and since the weather was so nice, we decided to go to Freestone Park.

Paisley with her Grandma Mary and Uncle Shaun. I love this picture because Mary and Shaun are looking one way and Paisleys looking the other. :)

That night, some family friends came over and we played games and made smores and roasted hotdogs over Mary's firepit in her backyard and had a nice relaxing night. It was the perfect ending to a really fun weekend.

My Classroom

I have now been teaching for 5 months and I have been loving every minute of it. Here are some fun things we have been doing...
Paper plate santas

Tissue paper wreaths

Our class word wall. During writing time the kids like to write stories but sometimes can't spell "non first grade words", so everytime they ask me to spell one of those words, I write it down and put it on our class word wall.

Snowflakes. They had sooo much fun making these. They made a total of 120 of them and I hung up every single one of them!

Our library corner. Ryan made the sunflower. He is SO talented!! He really makes me look good. :) On the bulletin board it says "Our Giving Tree". Everytime a student notices another student do or say something nice, they can write what it was down on a leaf and then I put it on the tree.

My first graders have to learn their subtraction math fact families to 13, so I thought it would be fun to create something to encourage them to memorize those fact families. Once all the kids memorize all 13 families, we are going to have a popcorn party.

This is the same as the popcorn idea, but this is for addition. And they get an ice cream party when they memorize their addition fact families.

For Presidents Day, we made these fun Abe lincoln hats. Abe Lincoln used to keep his speeches in his hate so he wouldn't lose them. So for this writing activity, the kids were told to write down what they would put in their hats. You can't see it, but the hats flip up to show what they wrote.

This big long chain hanging across the ceiling is called "Ernest". He is our class caterpiller. Everytime one of my kids reads a book, they get to write their name and the name of the book on a piece of the chain. So far my kids have read over 400 books since October!

Last month our class got to go to a Junie B. Jones Play! It was so awesome!! This is a really bad picture. The lighting wasn't really good.

For the 100th day of school. I made this HUGE sign for the kids to walk through.

Fun 100th Day treat

Christmas door hanger craft

My Valentines "Card" to my kids and co-workers. :)

Also for the 100th day, I had the kids do a "buklet list" of things they want to do before they are 100. They got to do a little drawing of what they thought they would look like at 100 using cotton balls for hair. :)

I am so blessed to have this teaching opportunity! I could not of asked for a more perfect class for my first year of teaching.