Sleepover!

It's a first grade tradition! Sleepover begins with a family homework project where each family creates a teddy bear from a pattern. The bears come in and take center stage at the beginning of Sleepover week. On Tuesday of that week parents come in at night for a Parent Night. Dinner is served and then parents visit their child's room and make a pillowcase to bring to the big event at the end of the week.

All through the week the teachers read books about sleepover, sing songs about bears and sleepovers, add sleepover to their morning message, read Sleepover poems for fluency, make bear glyphs in math, write narratives about sleepovers they have had, write "how to" make teddy bear instructions, and write "All About Sleepover" reports.

The big event on Friday begins with a parade through the darkened halls. The first graders, dressed in their pajamas and carrying a flashlight and their homemade teddy bear follow the Principal and Music Teacher (all dressed in pajamas!) as they all sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Then it's on to a pancake breakfast in the Dining Room (this year furnished by Denny's). As the children eat, pictures flash on the big screen of each child with his bear. After eating, the Principal calls all the teachers on stage and they perform (without rehearsing, of course) a little Hokey Pokey and Electric Slide. Then it's off to the centers for the morning, provided by the Resource Team

• In music the children learn a little "Bear Polka" where they actually get to R-O-A-R like a bear and then partner up for some "Square Dancing."
• The Art Room is full of book covers for the children to design, as professional illustrators.
• Outside the children separate into teams and each side "defends the bears," which are beanie bears on cones. The children on one side throw balls while the other side defends the bears. If you get tagged with a ball you are sent to the marshmallow field to get a marshmallow (white golf ball) to feed the bears before you can return. Even on this cool morning, the children work up a sweat.
• The centers are rounded out with a little "Sleepover Bingo" which features facts about books with bears as the main characters and facts about real bears that the children have learned this week. Bingo cards for this special edition of Sleepover Bingo can be found at the first grade wiki .

Each child brings a bag lunch and the class eats in their room while the Resource teachers are provided pizza as a thank you for the extra work of the day. The afternoon includes "KK's Sleepover Party" where the children go to the Media Center with their pillows (made at the Family Night) and their teddy bears. They get juice and popcorn while they watch a shadow puppet play of Ira Sleeps Over and a Winnie the Pooh movie. And then, they simply dance the day away. It's such a special memory for the first graders. Enjoy some of the memories below.