First Grade Adventures

Finally!! After vacationing and moving, we are finally settled, have internet service, and the computer unpacked. I've had a few blogs in the works for the past month so I'm hoping to finally catch up again. We've had so much going on, I'll try and keep it all separated with the posts.

Abby finished the first grade! I will start with a blog about her adventures as a First Grader at Crockett Elementary. Here's a picture of Abby on her first day of school last September and of the front of her school.

  She loved her teacher Mrs. Bond. Unfortunately, Mrs. Bond was in Italy for like the last two weeks of school and we left town on Abby's last day of school, so I never got a picture of Abby with her teacher. By the time I was serious about collecting pictures for this blog entry, Mrs. Bond was already gone. But Abby has pictures from her yearbook and binder so at least we have record of her teacher somewhere.

The biggest news for Abby during her 1st grade year was that she lost her very first tooth! She said she was the last person in her entire class to lose a tooth, so she was so excited to show me as soon as it was gone. She said she twisted it in the bathroom during school and it popped it. She went to the nurse who put it into a little tooth necklace to carry it until she went home. She had written a letter to the tooth fairy about week earlier when we first noticed it was loose to find out what she could do to get it to fall out sooner. The tooth fairy wrote her back with ideas of what she could try to help move it along. Abby was so excited to finally reach this milestone.

Abby's PTA program was titled, "The Cheese Stands Alone." I thought she would have volunteered for a singing part, but she and her two best friends all decided to be Swiss cheese together, so here she is in costume before the play and a shot of the entire first grade. (Abby is three rows up, second from the left.) From watching the video we took of her program, I found out that Abby knew every single kid's name in the first grade. There were four first grade classes and she knew everyone by name. I was impressed! I asked if everyone knew everyone else and she said no. I asked if everyone knew her and she said yes. That's right - my little social butterfly.

During the year, Crockett had a fundraiser and if you sold so many tickets, you could have a limo ride to a pizza lunch. With the help of mom and dad, both grandparents, and aunts and uncles, Abby succeeded in earning the limo ride. She was super excited. Here she is at the pizza place with the limo behind her. She's telling me to "hurry up" and take the picture.

A funny story to go along with this was when Abby called Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons to see if they wanted to buy some of the raffle tickets. Grandma said she'd buy some which was awesome, but Abby, our saleman, than followed up with "and how many would Grandpa like to buy?" The other part of the fundraiser story is, the grand prize of the entire fundraiser, which was an iPad 2, was won by a ticket that Abby sold! Unfortunately it wasn't for mom or dad. It was for Uncle Scott. I was shocked when I got a call from Abby's principal telling me Scott had won the grand prize. The rest of the family had a good time complaining that it was unfair that we hadn't won it ourselves, but in the end, we were all happy that someone from the family had won the grand prize.

To celebrate Earth Day, the first graders had their field trip to see the movie Chimpanzee. Then they had lunch in the park. The younger girls and I met up with Abby and her classmates at the park to play. I finally got some pictures of Abby with her friends.

 

 Near the end of the school year, they had a family fun day, or field day. The younger girls and I went to see and support Abby. They played games outside like ring toss, relay races, horseshoes, and ladder golf. They also went inside for popcorn and cake and heard a story by one of the first grade teachers. This is the only picture I have of Abby's first grade class all together. 

 During the last week of school, I was able to attend the first grade award assembly. Each class stood up in a line and as their name was called for an award, they would take a step forward. I was able to catch a picture of Abby stepping forward for one award while I was filming the entire thing with my other hand, so I was very proud of myself for multitasking.

Abby's awards included A Honor Roll, Cool Conduct, and AR participant. (Abby was a little confused why she didn't get the fourth award which was A-B Honor Roll, but it didn't take us long to explain that her award of A Honor Roll was the best you could get.) As an AR participant, which stands for Accelerated Reader, Abby read multiple books and then would take a test on each one. After so many tests, you could earn a t-shirt. Abby was one of the first kids from her class to earn her t-shirt and she had hers by Christmas. She is an avid reader now, and will read anything that she sees, whether it's books, road signs, or mom's texts (which she gets in trouble for).

And here is a final picture of Abby with two of her friends on the day of her awards ceremony. The one of the left, Haylee, was her closest friend in the first grade.