Hello families, Thank you for a wonderful conference week! It is always fun to connect with you about the progress that your child is making and I appreciate the time you take away from your work schedule to do so. With the election quickly approaching we have been learning more about the roles that the President has and our role as a voter. The discussions we have been having in class have been really interesting and fun as the kids are starting to understand the importance of voting on issues and that every candidate has pros and cons. We have talked a lot about being respectful other others opinions and I am stressing this in preparation of November 8th. Of course, we are using examples such as year-round school, cookies every day for snack, etc. versus our current real-world issues. I will leave the heavy work for the home conversations. Next week the kids will be filling out a voter registration form and they will be given an actual voter ID card on election day to use (photo included). I have made a voting booth out of PVC pipe and the kids are really excited about getting to use it. We have talked a lot about why these booths are important and how it protects our privacy when using our right to vote in an election. I am working to get "I Voted Today" stickers for the kids as well. In transition between the First Great Lesson and the Second we are working on the district science kits which involve light and sound. This week we learned more about our 5 senses and experimented with different objects to see if we could touch, taste, smell, see, and hear them. The kids all decided that vinegar does not taste good. FYI. With this lesson I was stressing the importance of using descriptive words that give a vivid image. I am really encouraging the kids not to use words like weird, strange, etc. when describing things they see, smell, hear, taste, and touch. Make sure to check out some of the photos I've posted below from this activity. We also did a Listening Walk. We walked through the school and recorded how many times we heard specific sounds. We learned that there is a lot of coughing going on in our school right now. It was a great reminder to wash your hands regularly! :) Pictures are going home today. Retakes will be on Tuesday, November 1st for those of you who would like a retake. However, I think all of their photos are just darling this year. Our class photo is also exceptional! We have a field trip coming up in December, I will be sending home permission slips soon. It is $8 per person, including chaperones. We are still in need of 2 more chaperones for this trip, please email me if you are available. So far Leah, Elise and myself are attending. We cannot do these trips without you and we so appreciate your time! Have a great three day weekend! Christine Homan
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Hello families,
Just like that, the first quarter is finished! It is amazing how fast these past weeks went by and all of the amazing work that the kids did just blows my mind. We had so much fun with our extensions and projects, it was a great start to the year! With that said, our solar system and volcano extensions are done and we are moving into light and sound now. We will tie these lessons into what we have learned about volcanoes and the three states of matter. The second great lesson (the coming of life) is also coming up quickly. This past week we created our Subject/Predicate books that you will get to see at conferences. We will continue working on these throughout the school year as we learn about and review the different parts of grammar. If you have not signed up for a conference, please do so through this link and make sure to select "mix" for the grade level: http://www.asdk12.org/ConferenceScheduling/StudentScheduleStartExt.aspx Spirit Week! Monday and Tuesday are regular days next week, Wednesday and Thursday are half days and Friday is an in-service. Please make sure your child knows where they are going at dismissal at 12:30 on Wednesday and Thursday to help lessen the confusion and frustration on their part. This is exciting and also overwhelming for the kids. They will eat lunch at school before their dismissal so please send their lunch as usual. Spirit Week is taking place next week too. Here is the schedule: Monday is pajama day -please make sure your child wears school-appropriate pajamas and has something to change into for recess to keep them warm. Tuesday is dress like Mr.Eddie Wednesday is superhero day -please no masks or weapons. Thursday is wear red for Red Ribbon Week Friday there is no school but it is our Fall Carnival from 6:30-8:30 We need 4 parents to help cover shifts for our booth, the Cake Walk. If you can help please shoot me an email. Shifts are 30 minutes and are listed below. If you're not able to volunteer at the booth I would appreciate a donation of cakes, cupcakes, or some other yummy dessert for the Cake Walk. We are also in need of helpers to help decorate the hallways, to set up before and take down after the carnival. Thank you for your support, we cannot do these fun activities for the kids without you! Cake Walk shifts: 6:30-7:00, 7:00-7:30,7:30-8:00, 8:00-8:30 Have a great weekend and enjoy this fall weather! Christine Homan ***Keep scrolling for photos of our volcano experiments! We had a really great afternoon building our volcanoes. Thank you to our many helpers that showed up to support our creative volcano building! Hopefully tomorrow we can paint them and next week we will put them to the test.
Thank you for the many donations of vinegar and baking soda as well. We are going to have some amazing eruptions next week!! -wrapping up solar system work; you'll get their artifacts that they made at conferences
- wrapping up experiments with volcano work and research; tying it to our new focus of sound/light and the states of matter. Still talking about it. -Second semester focus will be on the second great lesson and the coming of life. We will be working more on cardinal directions/globes/maps/biomes during this time. - We are doing a lot of "enrichment"- we can talk more about that at conferences. - Thank you to Liza, Chrystal and Elise for donating materials for our volcanoes and states of matter activities. And for providing snack, the kids are so thankful for the fruit leather and pub snack mix. Things we are working on: - teasing (there is a lot of teasing and mean-girl talk happening recently. Please talk to your child about this at home so we can tag team this. It will not be tolerated.) - Being respectful of snack time; the snack area is always left very messy and I am finding snack all over the room. Including smashed into our lovely yoga meditation pillows and work mats. The consequence for a messy snack area that had been repeatedly pointed out for days prior was no class-provided snack on Wednesday. On Wednesday snack was everywhere, smashed into our materials. The consequence for that occurring on Wednesday was no snack allowed in class on Thursday. Snack was back to normal on Friday. - 3rd years being role models; we are struggling to put our best behaviors forward and I know they can do it. Please remind your child of this expectation. They have an important role in our environment. Upside: we are doing so much interesting work! I am seeing so much progress in all of the kids, it is such an exciting thing to witness first hand! Upcoming dates needed for support: November 17th- Thankful Books (Leah and ? ) December 1st field trip - Elise and Leah, ?, ? - we need 2 more chaperones Upcoming events: Conferences- sign up online or email me with a few preferences! Fall carnival Mentor program, me out- November 9th and 10th all day. Sub. Hello families,
We have had another really great and productive week in class! We have been learning about volcanoes and just started our partner research on them. The students were asked to choose a Sheild, Cindercone, or Composite volcano to research and then design the construction of one. They will research and brainstorm today what materials they want to use for next Thursday's construction day. Please talk with your child about their list of materials as some of them may be quite elaborate (which is great!). If you would like to come in and help on this day I would so appreciate it, construction will begin at 1pm on Thursday. I have one concern I would like to address as a whole class. We have several friends who are not respecting the classroom constitution (rules), namely the "keep your hands and feet to yourself" and "use kind words". There have been a few incidents of children hitting others at random and this behavior will not be tolerated. Our school takes this kind of behavior very seriously as we want to encourage respectful and safe behavior. Please talk to your child about this; while they may think they are being silly, the student that is being hit does not find it respectful or kind. It is my job to keep everyone safe and there will be consequences for breaking this class and school rule. Please contact me if you have more questions about this. We have been talking about this issue as a class and will continue to focus on this expectation. You can also speak directly with Ms.Dene if you feel more comfortable doing so. On the upside of things, we have been rockin' and rollin' in class and it is really exciting! For the remainder of the month we will be working with volcanoes and states of matter for our science and cultural lessons. We are beginning to learn about cardinal directions and will be utilizing our world maps and globes soon as well. There is so much going on in class, the days are seriously flying by. For math we are working hard on using the Montessori materials for addition, subtraction, multiplication and we are just about to enter geometry and fractions for some students. During our enrichment time we are focusing on money and time. These are skills that you could easily practice at home with your child. You can give them a handful of change and have them identify the coin and its value or have them tell you the value of a group of coins. For more advanced work give them dollars and coins at different varieties or play an exchanging game of, "you have $3.00, this apple cost $1.00, how much do you have left?". These kinds of simple activities at home will help support what we are doing at school and the kids will love it! The days are going by so quickly in fact that parent teacher conferences are already here. Please make sure to sign up for a conference using the online scheduler. If you cannot meet at the available times we can schedule something that will work better however I cannot stay past 5pm. We can also do a phone conference if that works best for you. Half-days are October 26th and 27th, the inservice day is the 28th. Students will be dismissed at 12:30 on the half-days; they will have lunch before leaving school so please still send a lunch in. Parent Volunteer Opportunities: **If you would like to come in weekly and help with students who need support in the area of reading or math, I would love to put you to work! It would be basic number identification and letter sound work. I could use help on these days and times: Monday- 10:40-11:40am for math and reading support Tuesday- 10:40-11:40am for math and reading support Wednesday- 9-10:30am for math and reading support Friday- 9am-9:30am for spelling test proctoring and grading Friday- 1-2:00 or 2:00-3:00 pm for math and reading support Other opportunities to be involved: Thursday, October 13th - I need one or two parents to come in and help with the construction of our volcanoes. We will do this from 1-3pm. Thursday, November 17th - I need one or two parents to help create our "Thankful" books. This is an art project that will involve lots of construction paper and cutting. We will do this activity from 1-3pm. Thursday, December 1st - 9am-12 (we will be back earlier than 12) Field trip to the PAC to see 360 Allstars. We will need 5 chaperones for this walking field trip. Please let me know if you can attend and I will write you down. As always, if you have any questions or concerns please come and chat with me. I also just love to talk so I'm here for that too! I just ask that you come in before 8:30 or wait until 3:45, Monday through Thursday. I am on duty on Friday mornings and afternoons so you can find me outside on the playground at that time also. Have a great weekend! Christine Homan |
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