"I know you had to go with the other first grade teachers to learn, but don't ever leave us again. Ever. Ever. Ever!"

It has been a busy week full of leprechaun surpises, absent teachers, and soggy, wet days! On Monday and Tuesday, all of the first grade teachers were at a diversity training which was informative and useful but, given the above comment, I think it was a little stressful for the kiddos. Before we get to this week, I want to share some pictures we took on Thursday that shows the havoc that Fionn the leprechaun created in our classroom in honor of St. Patrick's Day. We had been learning about the holiday and the tiny, mischevious creatures all week and the kids were desperately hoping that Fionn would show up. Well, sure enough, Thursday morning (Fionn must have known that we didn't have school on Friday) as we were coming into our classroom we saw tiny green footprints... Fionn worked in our classroom all day making messes and tricking us. I wish you could have seen the surprise and wonder on the kiddos' faces! It was absolutely heartwarming to watch them all day and listen to their predictions about what was going to happen next. We worked our hardest to find him but to no avail. We only found the messes he left!

Heaven is cleaning up our homework basket
that was tipped over.

Check out those footprints!

We were a little excited...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We didn't know that leprechauns could climb!

We took a bathroom break and came back to find
our tables and chairs in a pile!

This week we read the book, It's Hard Being Five and even though none of us are five, we worked hard to identify what's hard in first grade. Did you know that first grade is tough? We concluded that some of the tricky things are: not having free choice everyday, sitting still on the carpet, using self-control, walking in the hallway, and coming in from recess. After talking about the tricky things, we discussed how smart and caring we are and talked about how we can use these in our classroom. Here were are drawing pictures of the tricky things.

Connor showing that playing with others is hard.

Nekon showing that it's tricky sitting on the carpet.

Abby showing it's tricky playing with friends.
Brandon showing how tricky it is to walk in the halls.