March 9, 2007

Upcoming Dates:

* Saturday, March 10th: Lunar New Year Parade and Festival
Watch the parade at 10:30am from Jollyman Park or come to Memorial park between 12:30pm – 5:00pm for the festival and activities.

* Sunday, March 11th: Daylight Saving
Remember to change your clocks one hour forward!

* Tuesday, March 13th: Kindness Website Presentation @ 6:30pm
Thank you to the following students who will be representing Eaton and sharing our Kindness website: Catherine, Geoffrey, Hitoharu, Lenny, Mayu, Moe, Reva, and Sammy. (For these students only: Attached to this newsletter is the script that needs to be memorized and rehearsed. Please practice and be ready by Tuesday. We will practice altogether during school on Tuesday and will meet again at 6:15pm in the Board Room at the District Office).

* Thursday, March 15th: Cupertino Public Library Field Trip
Please remember to bring your child’s blue library card to school that day. Also, make sure your child has memorized their 4-digit PIN number. I encourage you to frequently visit the library with your child on your own time. Let them learn and practice checking out books by themselves on the checkout machines.

* Friday, March 16th: Bring Leprechaun Traps to School!
This is a take-home project we are doing to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that began in Ireland. A few of the symbols attached to St. Patrick’s Day include leprechauns, shamrocks (4-leaf clovers), and rainbows with a pot of gold at the end. We would like students to invent a trap to capture leprechauns. Leprechauns are mythical figures in Irish folklore that trick you and take away your gold or treasure. They are very small and nobody ever sees them (of course).

* Thursday, March 22nd: Report Cards Go Home
Students will be receiving the second trimester grades as well as the scores from the CELDT (California English Language Development Test) that was taken in the Fall.

* Friday, March 23rd: No School – Staff Learning Day
The teachers will be working on writing assessments and additional Peacebuilder activities. Since there’s no school Friday, homework and library books need to be brought back on Thursday, March 22nd.

* Thursday, March 29th: Guadalupe River Park Field Trip
This field trip will let us explore the river while learning about plants, animals, habitats, and weather. Attached to this newsletter is the permission slip. Please sign and return by Friday, March 16th.

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Dear Families,

The weather is beautiful! We have been measuring the temperature every day and last week our low was 49 degrees and this week our high was 69 degrees! I hope the sun stays!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Yo
Poem of the Week: What the Rain Said
Song of the Week: One Dream
Kindness is … taking care of the classroom.
Story of the Week: What is the Sun?
Vocabulary of the Week: House 1
Word Wall: been, evening, far, forest, goes, hungry, near, soon
Next Week’s Sharing: Riddle – something green
(Hide a green object or picture in a bag and prepare at least four complete sentences to give the class clues.)
• Language Arts: Theme 6 Animal Adventures– Week 3
• Stories: Red Eyed Tree Frog
• Word Families: -ay (day, play, say)
• Sounds: vowel pairs ai and ay (paid, pay, maid, may)
• Grammar: Naming Words for One or More (-s)

• Writing: We started the first writing step in Writer’s Workshop, prewriting. This week we practiced making outlines and organizing our thoughts using Step Up to Writing. We also talked about making sentences interesting and varied. We will continue practicing prewriting using different topics including: weather, autobiography, and family.

• Math: This week we started geometry. This chapter had many vocabulary words and positional words such as: far from, next to, behind, between, etc. Please look over the math work from class and review these vocabulary concepts. We also learned different plane shapes and solid shapes.

• Science: We continued our weather unit this week. We made thermometers and learned about how thermometers are used in daily life. We are also getting better at graphing the temperature each day and recording the weather. In circuits, Mrs. Khan taught us about how rainbows are created.

• Computer: This week we spent time using KidPix to draw more pictures for our Kindness Journals.

• Music: We saw Mrs. More today and we practiced playing different instruments using patterns. We used triangles, sticks, cymbals, and drums to accompany songs.
We said good bye to Akane today =( We are sad to see her leave Eaton and we will miss her very much. Please keep in touch Akane and remember Room 8! Enjoy the warm, beautiful weekend!