Although different than any other, this school year started off with a great first week! The kids were so excited to get back into school, see friends, and begin the “routines” they are familiar with. They took all the new safety precautions seriously and are doing a great job remembering them each day. We are socially distanced in our room, get hand sanitizer when we enter or exit the room, wear masks or face coverings, and spend the whole day together.

On the first day of school I read the book Swimmy by Leo Lionni. This little black fish has a brilliant idea to teach the little red fish to swim together in the shape of a large fish so they can go exploring through the ocean rather than just hide among the rocks, fearful of large fish.  This year third grade has a hallway bulletin board that features fish decorated by each student and teacher.  It says “We are all different, but we swim together in third grade.”  Just like Swimmy, I hope our class learns to work together to accomplish many exciting things this year as we swim together in our “school”. We may not be able to swim as closely as the little red fish did in the book, but we aren’t going to let fear hold us back from accomplishing new things and learning together!

We spent a lot of time this week learning how to navigate our computers and log-in to different resources and tools we will use for learning this year. We are slowly becoming more proficient at finding and completing independent assignments on our Google Classrooms.

We enjoyed a “Fun Thursday” extra recess as a reward for ending the week with lots of behavior stars and completing all our work!