First Week Recap

It was great to meet many of you last night at Parent Night. For those of you who weren't able to attend, I hope to be able to post the presentation here so you can at least look through the slideshow and let me know if you have any questions. Look for that sometime this weekend.

I look forward to learning about your child when you return the blue paper in your parent night folder. Also, please don't forget to return the Homework and Discipline policy, the orange paper, from that folder, too.

It has been a crazy, crazy first week! We had several stations where we learned about Bear Creek. These included stations about the school rules, the walking path, BEAR time, the cafeteria, and how to prevent bullying at Bear Creek. We also did a team building activity with our Guidance Counselors, and we've done many other team building activities to get to know each other and to start working together. These included name juggling and a make a fist game. Both of these got us thinking about how our actions affect others and how it helps to focus on words.

To make the connection between this week and next week, we started looking carefully at our Code of Conduct. We learned that means a promise of how we'll behave. Today we worked in groups to think about what each word in our Code of Conduct means. It was tricky because I wouldn't let the kids use the word NO on our posters! Next week we'll talk more about what the Code of Conduct means and create projects for the website and room.

A group talking about what it means to be responsible

Yesterday and today we switched for our first days of math! During math class we thought carefully about what we're good at and what we'd like to be better at. We also took a fact pretest, and we also did our first two spiral reviews. An important part of our first two reviews got us thinking about where people use math every day, including patterns and sizes, and strategies people can use. These are just a few of the ideas we came up with during our discussion.

We also had our first fire drill at the end of the day today. I'm sure you heard all about how LOUD our fire signal is! It definitely surprised us all!

Thank you for a wonderful first week! Enjoy your long weekend, and we will see everybody again on Tuesday! :)

A Whirlwind First Day

It was so amazing to get to meet all of my new friends today! While lockers were challenging and the building was overwhelming, everybody had a very positive attitude and did a great job. We already have some locker experts, and I think everybody will be able to do their lockers by the end of this week. :)

Each night you should look for your child's agenda and homework folder. There's no folder tonight because we didn't have any papers, but some of you will find your child's back to school paperwork in their backpack. Please make sure to complete and return those forms as soon as possible. Each child also has 10 minutes of reading homework tonight. This can be ANY type of reading: picture books, chapter books, comic books, comic strips, websites, magazines, reading with you or listening to you read, reading you the grocery list as you're shopping! Anything that gets your child reading is what we want them to read. We will talk more about this on Parent Night Wednesday evening.

I hope your child feels like they had a great first day today! I'm looking forward to meeting all of you Wednesday night.

Open House Visit

It was so great to meet our 13 friends who came to visit the classroom during Open House today. I can already tell that we are going to be a wonderful family! Here are the reasons why everybody thinks 4th grade will be amazing:

Here are a couple of notes that may be helpful for the first day of school.

• If you'd like bring a healthy snack (goldfish, pretzels, string cheese, fruit, etc.) to eat during snack time since we do not eat lunch until 12:40!
• You may bring your own pencil box, homework folder, and magnetic / non-permanent decorations for your lockers.
• You do not NEED to bring anything - we have all of the supplies you will need for the year so do not feel as though you need to go out and buy anything.

If you have any questions prior to the first day of school, please feel free to email me. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody on Monday morning!

A Look at the Bair's Den

By now you have had a tour of Bear Creek, and you may have even attended one of the orientation tours here at Bear Creek this summer. But you may still be wondering, "What's it REALLY like to be a  fourth grader in the Bair's Den?" Well, the students who were in my class last year have some answers for you! Check out the video below to get the scoop!

We hope you enjoyed the video! If you have any questions, please leave comments, and I will answer them for you!

Welcome & Special Schedule

Hi everybody, and welcome to The Bair's Den! I am looking forward to having each of you in my class, and I hope you are just as excited as I am to be starting a new adventure at Bear Creek School!

Please check back here every day, and you will be able to find out a little bit more about our classroom, see some pictures (and maybe even a video!), and find out more about what our days will be like in The Bair's Den!

All of our specials will be held from 11:25 - 12:10. Each day I will update our homework page to remind you which special we will have the following day so you can help your child remember their sneakers, recorders or library books if needed.

• Day 1 ~ Library 
• Day 2 ~ Health (students should always wear sneakers for Health)
• Day 3 ~ Music
• Day 4 ~ Art
• Day 5 ~ Phys Ed
• Day 6 ~ Technology

I'm hoping that all of you will be able to come and join me on Wednesday, August 21 from 2:30 - 3:30 for our Open House. Come and see the school, visit the classroom, make your name tag, pick your first book, and meet some new friends.

I cannot wait for our new year together to begin!