Hello families,
This was a bit of a rough week. This kids were full of energy and it was tough to stay on task. I am pleased to say that Friday afternoon was great and our book report presentations were just lovely. We have a few friends that still need to complete and present their report on Monday. Every child should have their snow gear at school every day. It should come until the majority of the snow is gone. It is important for the kids to be warm when waiting outside in the morning and at recess. Also, we are cross country skiing for the next two weeks in PE and they will be outside for a full hour. If they do not have the proper gear they will not be allowed to participate. Parent Teacher Conferences are approaching quickly. The online scheduler is now open for scheduling. Please sign up for a meeting soon, many spots are already taken. This is a change for us to talk about your child's progress and to share their successes. On February 21st we will be going to the Alaska Zoo for a field trip to learn more about polar bears. We will get to do some hands-on and hopefully behind the scene lessons. It is $10 per person, including chaperones. Currently we need $50 to help cover scholarships for students. The kids and I are going to brainstorm how to raise this money; we are thinking about doing popcorn sales. The field trip will be from 12:15 until 3pm(ish). We will need several drivers to get all of the kids there. Currently I have 9 kids covered- I need 15 more seats! :) Please let me know if you're available so we can make sure to get you approved and your insurance on file with Alicia in the office. Our first Sea Life Center meeting is on Feb.28th. It will be right after school at 4pm in Ms.Goodman's room. All parents need to attend if your child is going on the field trip. We will discuss the agenda for the trip and pass out the permission slips for it. The $60 admission fee, per person, is due at the second meeting in March. We will be celebrating Valentine's Day on February 14th in the afternoon. If you would like to come in and participate you are welcome to do so. I will bring in sugar cookies and decorations for the kids to decorate, we will pass Valentine's out, and I may have one or two other tricks up my sleeve. I sent the list of names home this week. Please send in a food dish, something other than a sugary treat, for all of us to share. Below is a photo from our 100's Day celebration. The kids outfits were amazing! You will also find one photo of each book report presentation. I am really proud of the work the kids did for this. It was a challenging project and they rocked it! We will continue to do these, once per month, through the end of the school year. Each report should be a different genre than the one before. Have a great weekend and stay healthy! We had several friends out today for sickness. Christine Homan
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Hello families,
This past week we researched the different periods of the timeline for the Coming of Humans. Each child chose their period and are learning more about transportation, food, shelter, and other basic human needs during that time. They will be putting their work out in the hallway on our bulletin board. Be sure to check it out the next time you're at school! For those students doing book reports, the reports along with the project are due next Friday. The kids are doing the bulk of the work in class but they are welcome to work on the project and presentation piece at home with you if you like. They have been expected to be self-managing in class and responsible for this work for the past two weeks. We will be starting over with another book the following week. I'm looking forward to seeing their growth in this process in the areas of management, responsibility, and public speaking. Starting at the beginning of third quarter we have been doing morning board work. The kids have 15-20 minutes each morning to work out the problems on the board. They include 6 math problems (a mix of addition, subtraction and multiplication), a story problem, and one sentence in which they need to identify the mistakes. I have been blown away at the progress of this activity. The first week the kids were so overwhelmed and thought they weren't going to be able to do it and now we are flying through the problems and they are catching even my trickiest problems and equations. I am so proud of them for pushing through challenging work!! It has been so fun to see their eyes light up when they make the connections. I have also seen huge gains in their math fact assessments. So many good things are happening in the classroom. I just love it! If you have not signed up for a conference yet, please make sure to mark it in your calendar to do so. The online scheduler opens on February 6th. Conferences will be a maximum of 30 minutes. I wanted to allow a little more time for chatting this time and to show off some of your child's work. Please let me know if you need an alternate time outside of the hours I have set well in advance. Our first parent meeting for the Alaska Sea Life Center field trip will be at the end of the month. It is scheduled for February 28th at 4pm. It will be held in Ms.Goodman's room, across the hallway. This meeting will inform you of our agenda and give you a chance to ask any questions you may have about the field trip. We will also give you the field trip permission form during this meeting. Payment for the trip is due in March. It is $60 per person, including chaperones. Thank you, have a great day! Christine Homan Happy Friday!
This week we started working on our Third Great Lesson; The Coming of Humans. Each of the kids chose a period of time that they wanted to focus on and they are working now in small groups to research defense, art, religion, medicine, transportation, shelter and food during their period. Make sure to check out the bulletin board in the hallway as they place their artifacts on the board as they complete them. Beginning next week each student needs to have a tonette (recorder) to use for music class. This was on the supply list at the beginning of the school year. If you do not have one yet you can go to Music Man to purchase one. They are $5. The kids will be using them for a few weeks and they will be stored at school. Please label them with your child's name as they all look alike. It has been very cold out recently, as you well know. We have several students that are coming to class unprepared for the weather. If your child wears shorts to school, please have them bring snow pants or long pants to change into for recess. It is far too cold to be going outside with bare legs. Each child also needs to have a hat and gloves. If you need assistance in getting these items please shoot me an email and I will help you find a set. Parent Teacher Conferences are coming up soon. I have set up the schedule and currently am plugging people in already. The online registration opens on the 6th of February but I can do it myself manually if you're ready to book your conference. These are important meetings; please make sure to schedule a conference and to show up on time. Thank you! Our first parent meeting for the Alaska Sea Life Center field trip happening in April is coming up quickly. It will be February 28th at 4pm in Ms.Goodman's room which is right across the hallway from our classroom. We will be talking about the overall agenda of the trip, behavior expectations of students and chaperones, supply lists, and handing out the actual permission slip for the trip. The money for admission is due at the second parent meeting which will be in March. We have many parents going with us and I am so thankful for that! The kids and I are so looking forward to this experience and with the additional hands and help I know that it will be a really excellent trip. Nearly all of our students are going; how cool is that?? :) If you have any questions or concerns please send me an email or stop by class before 8:30 to chat. Thank you and have a great weekend! Christine Homan Hello families,
It is that time of year again! Parent-Teacher conferences are just around the corner. I have set up my schedule and you will be able to sign up online starting February 3rd. I will be doing one conference per morning from 8-8:30am from February 13th through the 16th. Conference week is the following week, I will have one opening Tuesday through Thursday and then from 1:00-4:00 in the afternoons. Each conference is 30 minutes and they start on the hour and half hour. If you would like to sign up now, please let me know and I will plug you in. Thank you! Christine Homan Happy New Year!
We have had an excellent first week back to school. I am so impressed with how well the kids transitioned back from our long break. I hope that you had a great time with your family and that you made lots of great memories together! We spent this week wrapping up the loose ends of our lessons from before the break. We worked on cardinal directions, topic sentences, paragraph writing, geometry and more! Next week we will be moving into our Third Great Lesson; the coming of humans. We will also be continuing to work on writing "super sentences" and quality paragraphs with a main idea. Some of the kids are switching from the Daily 5 to book reports. These students are responsible for choosing a just-right book for themselves, managing their time each day, and writing a 5 paragraph book report explaining specific ideas and aspects of the book. They will create a project and present the report to the class at the end. I am looking forward to this and how it works within our normal work schedule. I am so proud to say that all of the kids have either stayed in the spelling group or bumped up one or more levels. That is so very exciting! Our reading skills have also gone through the roof since the beginning of the year and our math is coming along nicely. I am just so stinking proud of all that the kids have done so far this year. It has been an amazing school year! Please make sure to send in the swimming field trip form. We will need many drivers for this field trip. Please make sure to check your insurance information to make sure you have the correct amount of insurance to drive students. If you do not and you want to chaperone you can still come, you will just drive your child and meet us at the pool. Each swimmer, including chaperones, is $5. We are in desperate need for snack! We had enough to get us through this week but we will need snack going forward. Thank you to those you regularly send in supplies; I so appreciate your support of our classroom and it does not go unnoticed. As always, if you have any questions please let me know. Christine Homan Hello families,
This week we learned about Christmas traditions in Mexico. The kids made angel ornaments, pinatas and pointsetta flowers. They researched foods and songs that are used to celebrate as well. We also learned more about trilobites and Alaskan dinosaurs. The kids were archeologists today and worked together to unearth their very own dinosaur! Next week we will be learning about Christmas in Italy. Lia's parents are coming in to share their Christmas traditions with us. They will be here on Wednesday afternoon to teach us more about the stories, food, and songs used in Italy. On Thursday, December 22nd, we are having our classroom celebration. Please be sure to send in one food item that your family enjoys each holiday season. Your child should be prepared to tell the class about the dish they have brought in. I will supply plates; if you send in a drink, please be sure to supply the cups as well. Your child may come to school dressed in their pajamas and they are welcome to bring a blanket or pillow too. We will be having a Read-In for the afternoon celebration. If you have not turned in your Sea Life Center sheet yet, please do so by Thursday. Ms.Goodman and I need this information in order to accurately book our field trip. There are still 3 spots available in the Sea Life Center for first grade parents to stay. Several parents have chosen to stay at the hotel across the street already. *There will not be a spelling list next week. Thank you, have a great weekend! Christine Homan Hello families,
I have some really exciting news! Ms.Goodman and I have been putting together plans for an overnight field trip to the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward, Alaska and we were APPROVED! This means that we are going to start sending paperwork home to help gear up for the behavior expectations, parent meetings we will need to have, supplies the kids will need to bring, etc. Please be on the look out for this important paperwork to go home tomorrow (Thursday). Ms.Goodman and I created a Donors Choose project in order to help curb the amount of fundraising the students would need to do to be able to attend. Much to our awe, we raised a lovely chunk of money in about two weeks using this platform. (We are not fans of bake sales so this was the best route to go for us!) We are beyond excited to be able to offer scholarships to students who need the assistance in order to attend. We are not able to fund chaperones; if you plan on chaperoning please expect to pay the $60 admission fee. We are only allowed to have 12 parent chaperones stay the night with us in the building due to fire code, this means our class gets 6 parents to stay in the building. However, we can have as many chaperones as we want come down with us to Seward; the additional chaperones will need to stay in a hotel room. There is The Hotel Seward right across the street from the Sea Life Center for those who would prefer this sleeping arrangement. You can check out their website here, Ms.Goodman and I stayed there in October and it was lovely: http://www.hotelsewardalaska.com Please let me know as soon as you are ready to commit yourself to this field trip.There are expectations of parent chaperones, just as there are for the kids. This includes but is not limited to no drinking (at all, even if you're staying at the hotel), no weapons of any kind, and you are responsible for your assigned group of children for the entire 24 hour trip. We will go into more details at a later date when we meet for our first parent meeting. We are sending out paperwork this week to get an idea of who will be sending their child and which parents want to attend themselves. We will not ask for payment until a later date. Thank you, we cannot wait to attend this field trip!! Christine Homan Hello families, This week we have been learning about the Christmas traditions in Germany. The kids have worked through the week to learn more about adventskranz and how they're used during the holiday season, when Christmas trees are put up and why, and traditional ornaments that were used in Germany. Each child got to make their own angel ornament that represents the Christkindl, Our classroom elf, Ms.Snowflake, also delivered each student their own pickle ornament. Please ask your child about the stories behind each of these. Along with our German holiday explorations we have been working hard on our Second Great Lesson. Each grade level has a different Timeline of Life of their own that they are recreating. We have also identified 6 major points on the timeline and are diving deeper into them. The first one was bacteria; each student made their own poster of bacteria including facts they have learned. The second step was studying more about Trilobites. Each child will get to make their own trilobite to take home; this will take a week or to since I only have one small mold. The third point we worked on this week was invertebrates and vertebrates. This vocabulary can be tricky to grasp but the kids did a great job! Ask them to explain to you the difference between the two and then to identify Alaskan vertebrates. They should be able to tell you at least a few! Next week we will move into amphibians, dinosaurs, and mammals to wrap up our studies of this lesson. Our winter benchmarks were completed this week and I was so pleased to see the amazing growth in reading and math across the board. The kids work hard every day and it shows in their assessments and daily work. I am so proud of them for being responsible and focused Montessorians. Starting Monday our cultural focus will shift to Mexico. We will be making pinatas and pointsettas as part of our exploration of their cultural traditions. Please make sure to discuss your family traditions with your child and begin planning a dish that they will bring to class to share on the 22nd. They will be expected to explain what they have brought. A huge thank you to everyone who has sent in supplies for our angel ornaments (salt and flour) and the gingerbread houses. I appreciate your support and the kids would not be able to do as many projects as we do without it! We will be assembling Blessing Bags as a primary team on December 16th. Each class is providing specific items and we will work as a team in stations to assemble the bags. They will then be delivered to a local shelter to help those in need. I am covering the supplies that I have signed our class up for but I wanted you to be aware of this project in the event that your child goes home talking about it. Our goal is to make 200 bags. Important Dates: December 16th- Primary Team Blessing Bags activity December 19th- Mrs.Homan is out for the morning, 9am-noon. December 22nd- Class Holiday Party- Please send in a family dish. December 23rd-January 8th - Winter Break! January 9th- First day back to school. Beginning of the 3rd quarter! Have a great weekend! Christine Homan Our grammar cabinet was knocked over by accident. It has been quite the process putting it back together but also a good lesson on being careful in our environment.A few of the kids have been drawn to the sign language cards recently. It has been so much fun watching them explore the cards and put words and even short sentences together.A third grade student working on the checkerboard. This is a material that is used for multiplication. It is one of my favorite materials in our classroom!Hello families,
Thank you to those of you who have already sent in materials for our German celebrations! We are good on candy and newspapers but we still need 2 tubs of frosting, one more bag of flour and one more container of salt. Thank you!! This past week we learned about the Second Great Lesson and reviewed the lesson using the Timeline of Life. The kids have started researching the different eras and periods within the timeline and are creating some really great artifacts to share with you. Make sure to stop by our timeline on the board in the hallway and check out what they've added to that as well; they are doing a lovely job! I am so proud of their hard work. Our field trip to 360 Allstars was really fantastic. The kids were well behaved and we had a great time. Thankfully the weather decided to be kind too! I so appreciate our chaperones; your time is valuable and we cannot do these trips (or projects!) without you. So, thank you from all of us! The window for our winter benchmark opens next week, I will be testing each student in math and reading using the standardized tests. When I have the scores recorded I will be sending them home. Please know that these are a dipstick of information; if you see something that concerns you please reach out to me so we can discuss your child's progress. The kids have been working so hard and I have been really pleased with all of the growth each of them are making this year. Thank you for supporting them not only at school but at home as well with their reading and math. This week (December 5th), we are starting our mini-unit on German traditions during the holiday season. If you have anything from your background that you would like to share, please feel free to send it in with your child or come in and talk the kids yourself. We would love that!! Have a great week, Christine Homan |
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