February 29, 2008

Upcoming Dates
* Monday, March 3rd: February Book-It Reading Logs Due!
Please turn in your February reading logs. I will be sending home March reading logs too.

* Thursday, March 6th: Last Day of Second Trimester
Report cards will be given out on March 21st. Grades will reflect your child’s progress from November to this date.

* Friday, March 7th: No School – Staff Learning Day
Teachers will be coming to school to work on writing strategies.

* Thursday, March 13th: Cupertino Library Field Trip
We will be walking to the Cupertino public library in the afternoon. Remember to send your child’s blue library card to school and have him/her remember the 4-digit password. Your child can check out 2 books. Please return them directly to the library on your own.

--------

Dear Families,

I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation last week! I went to San Diego and Mexico on a cruise. It was very relaxing and I ate a lot of food! We visited Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta.

As we return back to school, I have been spending extra time reminding students of the classroom and school rules. I ask students to evaluate themselves for their own behavior to see if they tried their best or not. Please actively continue to have conversations about doing the right things.

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Nasrin
Poem of the Week: Plip Plop Raindrop
Song of the Week: Penguin Song
Kindness is … eating healthy for your body
Story of the Week: What is the Sun?
Vocabulary of the Week: House 6
Word Wall: cow, door, house, now, there, though, wall
Next Week’s Sharing: Spring Poem
(at least 4 lines memorized and bring something to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 6: Animal Adventures – Week 2
• Stories: Eek! There’s a Mouse in the House
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Question / Noting Details
• Word Families: -eat
• Sounds: long e, vower pairs ee, ea
• Grammar: Naming Words for Things and Places

• Math: We finished our chapter on Geometry, Fractions, and Probability. This week we have been reviewing everything that we have learned since the beginning of the year including money, graphs, place value, and problem solving.

• Writing: Many students have finished their rough drafts of the Mitten story. Some students are writing their final copies and some students have even begun illustrating their stories. This project encourages students to be independent workers.

• Science: We went to Mrs. Chou’s class on Tuesday for circuits. We talked about wind and the rainbow. We made kites using rainbow colored strips of paper and yarn. This week, we did an activity on nutrition since it was our Kindness Journal topic of the week. We brainstormed different fruits and vegetables that would be healthy for our bodies.

• Social Studies: We are continuing to learn more about penguins. We are reading stories and this week we watched a video about the life of a penguin. We also did an art project of a penguin.

• Music: Mrs. Stauter was sick this week, so we did not get a chance to have
music with her. We are continuing to prepare for our first grade musical. I am looking for participation!

• Art: Mrs. Blakeslee is starting an art unit about ink and painting. We started today practicing making different strokes using authentic bamboo brushes. We learned that some pictures have changed from written language and characters.

• Computer: This week we did an activity in KidPix on fractions. Students had to show 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 of circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. They drew the lines and filled in the fractions.

• Assembly: We had an interesting assembly today called Pioneer Living.
We watched an introduction to the assembly video on Thursday afternoon that explained how to complete different activities. For example, there was a station where you could use soap and pretend to shave like the pioneers did. Or another station where you could mine for gold. This was a great hands-on experience for the kids!

• Buddies: Today we saw our buddies and worked on measurement. We made inch rulers and centimeter rulers. Then we started measuring different parts of our bodies or objects around the room. You can keep these rulers because in a few weeks we will be doing measurement in math!

Welcome back and Happy March!