Readers' Theater is a great activity to get kids reading. We combined a religion lesson with readers theater and it was a big success.Our first grade acted out the Nativity. We included the trip to Bethlehem, the appearance of the angels to the shepherds, and the scene in stable with baby Jesus in the manger.We practiced several times in the classroom and the students also rehearsed at home.

I was very impressed with their performance. I hope you will enjoy it also.

First grade had a very amazing day to enjoy the sights at Botanica in Wichita, KS. Our visit was centered around the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly. We visited several stations supervised and presented by Botanica volunteers. One station was a game that explained the migration pattern of the Monarch; students were shown a giant size map of the United States and Mexico which was marked with the migration path of the monarch and a lively discussion took place about the map, students were then given monarch butterfly puppets from Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas.They had to 'fly' to various spots while trying to avoid preditors- predators were a truck, a bird, and a spider played by parent volunteers. The destination was Mexico, and only one butterfly survived to that point. We also went to a station where we watched a tagging demonstration. A volunteer tagged a Monarch with a numbered sticker on it's wing. The volunteer recorded the number and sex of the butterfly on a sheet with our school name and grade. In a few weeks researchers from KU will try to locate Monarchs tagged for this event. If ours is located we can find out on the monarchwatch.org website.  We were able to watch as one of our students released the butterfly. The first graders were very excited about visiting the butterfly house. It had ben a cool but sunny morning so the butterflies were moving a lot. The volunteers showed the children how to move very slowly and convince the butterflies to climb onto a finger or hand. One butterfly decided to take a ride on Mrs. Renyer's head, guess that means the teacher is moving very slowly these days. The last two stations allowed students to view parts of butterflies and moths under microscopes and to discover what it would be like to have a compound eye as the butterflies have by use of a special viewing glass. I was very pleased that the volunteer then took us to see the Coi goldfish that live in the pond and streams at the gardens. She even gave us  fish food (in the past this was not part of the program). The children described them as 'giant'. After the program we went to Riverside Park to have our picnic lunch and play on the expansive playground. The equipment of choice seemed to be a large web-like structure; I heard something about Spiderman mentioned by several climbers. We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day (which ended with rain as we drove back to Kingman) and several very helpful, kind parent volunteers. Hopefully the day will be a favorite memory for all.

Click on photo of First grade class below to see more pictures! 

First graders went on a treasure hunt during the first days of school.To set the mood for our hunt I read How I Became A Pirate during which the students echoed such pirate phrases as " Aye Matey!" and "Shiver me timbers!" Afterward we became pirates- not the typical story book type, though we dawned scarves and eye patches, in search of treasure in our classroom. Each student had an opportunity to search for hidden treasure as we did a tour of our room. When a pirate found a gem we would discuss why the particular place in the room could be a treasure to us this year. We hunted in areas such as:at cubbies and mailboxes, computer center, listening center, quiet reading corner, math meeting center, writing center, job chart, small group reading center, etc. During the hunt the pirates anticipated finding the largest treasure which they predicted we would find in the large treasure chest in our prayer corner.First grade pirates know where our greatest treasure can be found! We very reverently entered our prayer corner and sure enough we found the greatest treasure found yet- the bible. When asked to tell why this was the greatest treasure several answers were given including: it has God's words, it has the words of Jesus that Father reads in Mass, it tells us about Jesus. I later overheard a first grader responding to the question:"So how is first grade, do you like it?" The response was "Yes, we found alot of treasure!" Mission accomplished! It was a great way to start the year.