Dear Friends,

The First Graders at Corpus Christi School have been waiting for the month of January to end.....so they can begin the month of February and the Tooth Tally! Thank you for introducing yourselves to us. May we share something about us with you? There are 31 of us - the only first grade class in our school of 295 students. We are the parochial school of our parish, Corpus Christi Church. Most of us live within 5 miles of the school which is in Piedmont, a community surrounded by the larger metropolis, Oakland - home of the Raiders and Golden State Warriors. There are, of course, other wonderful attractions in Oakland including the new Chabot Space and Science Center ( www.chabotspace.org ) and the Oakland Zoo (www.oaklandzoo.org) Oakland is in the East Bay, west of San Francisco. We are so fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful the hills in the east and the beautiful vistas of the the bay to the west. Only on the darkest of rainy days, or foggy days do we not see the skyline of San Francisco and Oakland. We are enjoying beautiful but cold days this month. While we live in this mild climate year round, we have had to be very careful conserving our electrical and gas reserves. You may have heard that we experienced rotating black outs! Almost all of the students in first grade have been together since pre-school days and we look forward to learning together for many more years. We love reading and math, and art, and science. There's so much to do in first grade and we love all of our field trips. We will hear the San Francisco Symphony (www.sfsymphony.com) tomorrow! We also perform service to others each month when we visit senior friends at the Mercy Retirement and Care Center. This week we're celebrating Catholic Schools Week. Our grandparents visited on Monday and yesterday we held Open House for many people in the community. Today the teachers are honoring us! We didn't have to wear our uniforms to school and we won't have to do homework tonight, but our parents will still read to us 20 minutes as they do each and every day. We were especially excited to learn that our Tooth Tally Buddies live all over the continent because our first research project is a STATE report. But we will certainly be sure to learn about our neighbors to the north as well. Many of the families have traveled to Canada! This year we are able to join you in the Tooth Tally because we finally have a great technology team to help us get wired and hooked up to the internet. We're looking forward to hearing from each of you and wish you well in your season of lost teeth! Good luck and we'll be checking in soon! P.S. Be sure to visit our web site!

Dorothy Lee

First Grade Teacher Corpus Christi School California

( www.corpuschristischool.com )