Finishing up First Grade

I know.  I know.  I haven't posted in a while.  To be honest, life has kind of been on hold the last couple of months.  Steve has been traveling a lot (more on that in a future post) so I've been busy holding down the fort.  We've also been busy with fun "end of the year" activities. 

The first large activity was the First Grade Rain Forest Project.  This is such a large project that they literally call it a "family project" because they know that no first grader could do it on their own.  They were to pick a rainforest creature and learn everything they can about it.  Then they were to get a shoe box and decorate the OUTSIDE of it like the creature, and the INSIDE of it like a diorama of it's habitat.  Then they did an oral report on their creature, showing off their box.  Molly chose the orangutan.  I had NO IDEA how to turn a shoe box into an orangutan.  But it's amazing what you can do with fake fur, some brown felt and a glue gun.  Needless to say, Molly and I had a blast putting this together with one another.

Mrs. Valdez, her teacher, saved the rainforest projects for their annual Open House night.  She had decorated the entire classroom like a rainforest with vines hanging down from the ceiling and animals hanging from the vines.  It was VERY impressive.  After we toured through the classroom, all the first graders convened outside to sing three songs for the parents.  It was ADORABLE and the teachers did such an amazing job!

I can not say enough good things about Mrs. Valdez.  It was because of her amazing care and involved teaching that Molly has flourished this year, despite her language processing struggles.  At our last parent-teacher conference she said to me that for the first time ever Molly has been getting in trouble for talking during class, and she was THRILLED about it because it means she's finally coming out of her shell.  It's amazing to see her confidence growing, and I owe so much of that to the amazing teaching of Mrs. Valdez.