Celebrate Doggy Day!

Our class recently did some research about holidays:  Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year, and Earth Day.  For a final activity, each 1st grade class created our own new holiday.  Our class decided on Doggy Day to celebrate dogs for all the love and help they give people.  We came up with symbols and special events that people could participate in.  And today all the 1st grade classes got together and had a holiday parade to share our holiday creations with the rest of the school.  We carried a banner to show some of the most important ideas about what dogs do for us and what we can do for them!  

Holiday Card Project

One of our big design projects back in November and December was to write letters to wounded servicemen in Walter Reed Hospital and create holiday cards with movable parts to send them.  We studied books that had pop-up parts, wheels that turned, flaps to open, and tabs to pull.  Students experimented with different types and then came up with their ideas and created cards which we mailed along with their letters.  

Here is part of the response we received from Lauren Honeycutt, our contact at Walter Reed:

"I got the box yesterday and delivered the letters this morning! They are AMAZING! They were a huge hit with all of the staff and patients - we cannot believe that first graders made those!!"

And here is a photo of Lauren at the nurse's station at the hospital holding some of our cards and letters: