Hello to everyone! I hope that Spring Break has you feeling refreshed and ready to come back! This time of year is always so busy and exciting, especially at M.G. Ellis. Let’s start with the Heart Walk and Health Fair that we have every year at the beginning of March! This is an event that I (Cindy) along with my lovely committee put together at our school. We invite parents to come and do a 30 minute fun walk around our playground area, facilitated by our awesome P.E. teacher Mrs. Hamilton. Afterwards parents get to visit booths that give them lots of information about how to stay healthy by getting their weight and BMI, insurance, and local dentists offices just to name a few, a big thank you to Lynne our school nurse for her hard work in getting all of these wonderful people together. We had over 160 people in attendance this year! What a great turn out! I was sooo busy during all of it that I only got a few pictures.
Last week, wait the week before spring break haha, we talked
about rainbows, St. Patrick’s Day and leprechauns. Sandra asked her little ones: “What would you
do if you found a pot of gold?” They
made this super cute anchor chart, put their ideas on a cloud then, they added
a rainbow chain attached to a pot of gold.
Her display looks AMAZING don’t you think?!
The next activity I’m going to show you is one that we’ve
been doing for a few years now, I really love this activity. We asked the students, “Who is worth more
than gold to you?” We started out with
this anchor chart to help them write about who they chose, along with two details
of why that person means so much to them.
One of my students said, “My teacher is worth more than gold to me. She gives me hugs and teaches me about
everything.” That students is now my all-time
fav!---Just kidding I love them all!
Here’s a picture of my example and some of Sandra’s students’ writing. I decided to add a rainbow to the top and
make my pot of gold black just to change it up a little bit.
My class did the leprechaun directed drawing from First
Grade Blue Skies again along with a modified leprechaun application we didn’t get
to finish
L. This year I let them use liquid water colors
to paint the background after coloring their leprechauns with crayons. I was very nervous about using liquid water
colors with my kids but, then I had the great idea of letting only half of them
paint at one time, while the other half was busy doing something else, and let
me tell you, it really saved my sanity!
I know, “Let it go Cindy,” but spilled liquid water color is something I
can’t! LOL! Some of the kids got fancy
with their painting! I will definitely let
them use liquid water colors again. Yay! I made a modified, "What is your leprechaun name?" off of a list of named I found on google images. Once again the kiddos got a kick out of their leprechaun names. Some of them were very fitting of them! ;-) I posted them on the wall so the parents can try to find which one belongs to their little one.
Sandra did a leprechaun craftivity from our hero, the wonderful,
Deanna Jump! She paired it with our “How
would you catch a leprechaun?” cause and effect writing activity. She also did this super cool paper strip rainbow
from Pinterest. What looked to be super
simple turned into something a little more challenging for kinders. There was something about folding the papers
over to the opposite side that was a little tricky. None the less Sandra got them through it and
had these beautiful finished products to show for it. The kids wrote about what their favorite color
was and two things that are that color.
That was the week before…Spring Break!!! Sandra, left on an adventure to Thailand (can’t
wait to hear all about it), while I stayed home. I feel like we’ve been running full speed
since we came back from winter break. I
made it a point to try to do something every day as a sort of soul
cleansing. My spring break was
awesome! I had brunch with family, loved
on my nieces and nephew, had long and unrushed talks with friends, watched
Zootopia (it was soooo good!) with my family and relaxed with my love and my
fur baby as we binged on Netflix and Hulu.
I couldn’t ask for more, my heart is full, my body is recharged and I’m ready to welcome my little loves back to school with a smile and a HUGE hug! Helloooooo springtime! What did you do for spring break? Let us know.
J Have an amazing week back at school friends.
-Cindy and Sandra
