Hello families,
We had a short but fabulous week together as a class! The kids earned (finally!) their final letter to spell out "scientific" which earned them a celebration this afternoon. We played a fun game of Jeopardy which had a series of questions from all that we have learned this school year so far. They also enjoyed a slice of pumpkin pie and whipped cream. Yum! Next week we will have a new friend starting; his name is Jackson and he is a third grader. I believe he is arriving to us fresh from Colorado. I know the kids will help to make him feel welcome and to learn the routines and expectations of our classroom quickly. The book and t-shirt orders have been submitted. Hooray! I'm hoping to get our shirts within the next two weeks, our books may take a bit longer. I am still hoping that they'll arrive before winter break though. I will keep you updated if you placed an order. This week we kicked off our Second Great Lesson; The Coming of Life. Please talk to your child about what they took away from this lesson. There is a lot of information in this lesson and I enjoy hearing what the kids focus in on; every kids finds something different that draws them in. I just love it! We will be using this for our science focus for the next month or so. Watch for some great projects and information to come home that they're learning more about from this lesson. Be sure to watch the progress of our life-size timeline on our hallway board too. A huge thank you to everyone for all of the lovely Thanksgiving cards and gifts that were sent in for me as well as the Small Hands orders. I feel so loved!! I appreciate all of you and the support you provide for the kids and me. I hope that you all have a lovely Thanksgiving break with your family. See you next week! Christine Homan
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Hello families,
The kids and I are just so surprised at how quickly the time is passing, it just has not slowed down! It is hard to believe the we are already approaching the end of November. Thank you for getting your field trip forms in on time for me, we have to pay in advance for many of the field trips and this helps us stay out of the "red" in regards to our field trip funds. Many students chose to order a book and/or class t-shirt and I am super excited to see both of them come together! We have finished the design of our classroom shirt and the order will be sent out today. We should have our shirts within the next two weeks. I can't wait to share them with you! Our classroom book is mostly done but we have to do our final drafts. Once done, it will take a few weeks for those to arrive. This week we started our Second Great Lesson; it is one of my favorite's to teach! We will be talking about the Coming of Life through winter break. Look for some great projects to come home that will help the kids understand this timeline of life and where our place is in the world. We will be kicking off the discussion with algae, moving through trilobites, reptiles, mammals and into humans. The older kids are already talking about Australopithecus in anticipation of the lesson. I just love it! Starting the first week of December, our Practical Life shelf will be filled with holiday traditions from around the world. This year we are going to focus on Italy, Mexico, and France. If you have any artifacts that you could loan us for this time or would like to come in to share something from your own heritage, I would so appreciate it. Rebecca, Max's mom, is planning on coming in to make latkes with the kids and Lynn and Joe, Lia's parents, will be coming in to share some of their Italian holiday traditions with us as well. A huge thank you goes out to Leah, Shepherd's mom, for helping us with the third grade Thankful books. This is not a simple task and I so appreciated the help. I love when parents are able to come in to help, interact, and be a part of our environment. Thank you, Leah! Lastly, our holiday classroom celebration with be on December 22nd. Please send in a food item for our "feast" with your child. We will be having a day of celebration together in honor of all of our hard work for the past few months. This will be a read-in day, so send your child to school in pajamas and ready to hang out, read, and have a good time with their classmates! We will feast in the afternoon between 1 and 3pm. You are welcome to join us. ***Please remind your child not to take any valuable items to school. Things get taken, they go missing, and they get lost. It is really unfortunate when this happens and I have no control over it. The best thing to do is to leave valuable items at home.*** Due to there being no school on Thursday or Friday of next week there will be no spelling words list sent home. Enjoy your time with your family this Thanksgiving! Have a great weekend, Christine Homan Hello families,
This past week we had so much fun learning about Dia de los Muertos and more about the three states of matter. We even had a guest speaker visit us from KTVA, Melissa Fray. She is a meteorologist for the station and came to talk to us about weather. We got to ask her all kinds of interesting questions and she showed us an awesome experiment involving cold and hot air. We also worked on more of our light/sound unit and got to make cup-a-phones and work with different kinds of vibrations. Did you child talk to you about our Listening Walk last week? To wrap up the week we did an experiment using rice krispies and marshmallows to show how the states of matter can change properties to go from a solid to a liquid and back to a solid. Using a crock pot and the scientific method, we observed the different states of matter change right before our eyes. We had a blast doing this and got to have a yummy treat after our experiment was over. Check out the photos at the end of the post for our fantastic week! Next week we will be giving our Presidential speeches, voting on election day, and beginning our Thankful projects for the month of November. We will be wrapping up our unit on light/sound and three states of matter as we move into the Second Great Lesson mid-November. The kids have been working so hard and we have had so much fun with all of these great projects this year. The time is just flying by! I have sent home an order form for a book that we do each year. This year we have decided to use our Presidential speeches as the theme. Each child will get two pages; one for their speech and the other to create an illustration of themselves as President. The books are $19.95 each if you would like to purchase one. Please do not feel obligated to do so. However, if you could check "no" if you don't want one and send the form back into class we can get a free copy for our classroom. I would so appreciate that! In their mailboxes today I have sent home a permission slip for the 360 Allstars field trip that is coming up in December. Please fill it out and return it with the $8 admission as soon as possible. You can pay the $8 fee through your parent Zangle account if you prefer. We still need one (or two) chaperones for this trip. Please arrive at 9am if you are chaperoning. We will return between 11:30 and noon this day. Lastly, and I swear I won't ask for any more money from you for a while, the kids would like to do our Classroom Faces t-shirts this year. We have not done this for two years, and again, this is completely optional. The cost of the shirt is $15 and the order form is also being sent home today. This is a one-time order opportunity for the shirt and the books. Have a great weekend and I will see you all on Monday, Christine Homan 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 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 Hello families,
Wow, what an amazing week we had together! The kids worked so hard this week and created some really beautiful work. 3rd graders are working on a solar system beaded necklace, 2nd graders created styrofoam solar system models, and the 1st graders are working on their solar system books. All of these activities are follow up to our Big Bang lesson and visit to the Anchorage Museum. Not to mention, we had an EXPLOSION in our classroom too! Braeden and Wren worked together beautifully to build an active volcano that we have been experimenting with in class. This is a great introduction into the States of Matter science lessons we will be doing soon. It has been really lovely to have parents come in and volunteer their time. Big shout out to Jerry for helping with the 2nd grade project (and all of that painting!) and to Liza for working very creatively with the 3rds on their painted beads. You are brave souls and you are SO appreciated. If you would like to come in and work with the kids or help out with making materials, please let me know. It has been really great to have you in the classroom! In case you do drop by on Tuesday or Thursday afternoons, you may notice another adult in the room. Currently we have a UAA practicum student spending 30 hours with us; her name is Jenna Buchanan and she is in the Early Childhood program. She has dove right in and is actively helping the kids with lessons and guiding them on making good, responsible classroom choices. Please make sure to say hello if you see her. Have a great weekend, see you on Monday. Christine Homan |
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