Teaching Touches Children Forever

Centers today included a maze to help the Groundhog find his burrow, followed by books about Groundhog Day.
Yesterday, we all picked a book we loved. Today we wrote the name of the book and its author on heart-shaped paper. We remembered to underline the title so the reader will know we are writing about a book. (These will go on our new "Books We Love" bulletin board.)
In the spelling center today, we stamped out the letters of our word wall words.
We have to carefully look at each letter, find that letter's stamp, and then return it to its place after using it. (If we want a challenge, we make the vowels a different color.)
Poetry Center: Each week, we add another poem to our Poetry Notebook. Here is today's poem in honor of Groundhog Day:

We glue it on the first blank page of our notebook, add the short date at the top, re-read the poem, and illustrate it to show that we know what it says.
We had a good time using our Groundhog puppets to read several charts about Groundhog Day together.
Guess what! We have now complete enough laps on the track to be Marathon Kids! We will all get t-shirts for all our diligent track work that meets or exceeds the distance of a real marathon.
On your marks, get set, GO!
Rounding the track.
Today's first place winner...
second place winner...

and third place winner!
We went outside to see if we could see the sun or our shadow. Nope. But Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow in Pennsylvania on Gobbler's Knob today, so (according to legend) we will have six more weeks of winter. (Here is a link to Phil's prediction.)
Guess what else we did today? We made hearts for our Sweetheart Tree by the door. (Come in and admire it some time!)
We worked very hard at learning how to cut out hearts.
While we were working with all these scraps of paper, we also decorated our Valentine's bags for next week's card sharing. (You may begin bringing cards on Monday!)
We had such a fun day in first grade today! February is full of special occasions. (Attention: tomorrow is our first Wednesday February Warning: we will be extra careful to spell the tricky words "Wednesday" and "February" correctly on each Wednesday of this month.)

Don't forget library books are due tomorrow. Mrs. O'Brien will be out Thursday for a family funeral. Ms. Hallock will be subbing. You must order a book before Thursday if you want it autographed by our visiting author.

We ended the day by walking out the door and being treated to a visit with Ian's faithful dog, Owen (who is quite the fashionista canine.)