Aaron Gierhart

Here are a few photos from our first class writing sharing session. We write in our journals based on a loose prompts twice a week. Lately, we’ve written about our first week of school, if we were a fish, and our most recent trip to the dentist.

The first graders in all three classrooms attended our biannual bus safety drills. These are important, not just for the students who ride the bus to and from school daily, but also for every student since we use Pink’s Bus Transportation for our field trips.

To all of the new ’subscribers’ to my first grade blog, I hope the start of the school year has been fun and exciting. We have a wonderful group of 23 first graders in my classroom this year. I have made the move from Southwest Elementary to Millikin Elementary with ease and the staff here have welcomed me with open arms.

Please continue to check back frequently, as I will begin posting photos of our goings-on in first grade from time to time!

Here are some photos from our sunny afternoon outdoors for Olympic Day. Special thanks are due to Mrs. Nash for putting this fun even together for the students.

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Last week, we had our spring music concert here at Southwest. The theme Mr. Johnson selected this year was Top of the Charts: 1970’s. Our first graders sang:

“I Shall Sing” by Art Garfunkel (1974)

“Sing” by The Carpenters (1973)

“The Candy Man” by Sammy Davis Jr. (1972)

“Can’t Smile Without You” by Barry Manilow (1978)

“I Believe in Music” by Mac Davis (1971)

Here are some photos of the students from the concert. They did an excellent job:

Yesterday, we had out Southwest Circus Day with the good folks from Cirque Amongus. It was a blast. If you couldn’t be there, check out the great photos our visitors posted online for us to view and download for free right HERE.

As a conclusion to our science unit about animals and habitats, I assigned each school an animal indigenous to Illinois to make a poster about. From the common loon to the redbelly snake, the bluegill to the woodchuck, the dragonfly to the wood frog, we learned a lot this past week.

Since Earth Day was last week, five of the students in our class that are in the local Girl Scout Troop decorated a new recycling box for our class to use. This was the focus of their recent meetings from what I understand. Special thanks to the Girl Scouts for our new recycling container!

As part of our plants and seeds science unit, we read Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed. I felt it would be fun to integrate a short author study into our week, so we watched the short film Eric Carle: Picture Writer and learned how Carle creates his unique illustrations in his books. You can learn as well! See the photos below!

First we had to decorate our “pretty papers.”

Then we traced with stencils on our papers and cut out the various parts to make a…

…FLOWER!!!

I hope everyone is having a great Easter break and a wonderful Easter Day! To commemorate the holiday, here are some photos from our Bunny Brunch on the last day of school before the break. The students wanted me to make sure to post photos of their stuffed bunnies they brought in, so here they are KIDS!