January 30, 2009

Upcoming Dates

* Friday, February 13th: Valentine’s Day Party and Cupertino Library
We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day by exchanging cards. Every child must prepare Valentine cards for every student and bring them to school on Valentine’s Day in a bag. They can be homemade or store-bought cards. Here is a list of all the students' names in our class. Please have your child write: To: (student name) and From: (your child’s name) on each envelope and prepare 20 cards (the 20th will be a blank card):
Alina Dennis Emi Emilie Fuka
Hadas Jhanvi Julia Kayleigh Kinako
Mai Matthew Maya Melissa Naoki
Ryan Seyon Terrence Winny ?? (maybe new student)

We will be walking to the Public library in the afternoon. The librarians will read us some stories and we will check out 2 books. Please remember to bring your blue library cards and memorize your 4-digit PIN number! You can return these books on your own when you finish reading them. Please do not bring them back to Eaton.

* Monday, February 16th – Friday, February 21nd: Winter Recess
There will be no school this week. Have a great vacation!

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Dear Families,

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Emilie
Poem of the Week: January Thaw
Song of the Week: Penguins
Kindness is … following your dreams.
Story of the Week: The Hat
Vocabulary of the Week: Body 2
Word Wall: could, house, how, over, own, world
Next Week’s Sharing: Regular: something you made using 100 items
(at least 4 sentences memorized and bring object/picture)

• Language Arts: Theme 5: Home Sweet Home – Week 2
• Stories: Me On The Map
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Summarize
• Word Families: -ate, -ake
• Sounds: long a, final –nd, -ng, -nk
• Grammar: Which Kind of Sentence?

• Math: We finished our chapter on money this week. The Money song we have learned will hopefully be helpful to remember the coins and their values. We spent time solving money word problems together as a class and reviewed counting coins. Next week we are starting a new chapter on geometry, fractions, and probability.

• Science: On Tuesday, we went to Mrs. Zankich’s class for our winter circuit. We wrote an acrostic poem using the letters in the word, Winter. Then we decorated the poem. We have finished observing our grass and wheat plants. I sent home our observations in today’s Friday folder. We are continuing to learn about different ways plants grow and what they need to live.

• Social Studies: We talked about Chinese New Year on Monday. We read several stories about this celebration and made a dragon puppet. Also, we continued learning more about Emperor penguins this week. We talked about the body parts of a penguin as well as where penguins live in the world.

• Writing: Many students are finished with their sloppy copies in our Mitten stories. We learned about editing and revising our stories and are starting our final drafts now. This will take several weeks to complete, but will teach the children how to become great authors!

• Computer: Since we have been learning about money, this week we did an activity using Kidspiration where we had to come up with different ways to make a certain amount. We used money coin stamps to complete our projects.

• Assembly: Today we had an assembly from Stepology on Tap Dancing and Beats! They had two tap dancers, a person on the keyboard, and even one person making beats with his mouth. This was a very entertaining assembly for the students and we even learned how to make some of the beats!

Please remember to turn in your January reading log on Monday! A new February reading log will be in Monday’s homework folder. Please remind your children to follow school rules and be kind friends to one another each day. I have been giving reminders frequently throughout the day for children to treat each other respectfully and to focus on their work. Also, please try and come to school on time each morning. Students who come in after 9:00am are listed as tardy. Thank you.