Friday, April 24, 2009

April 24, 2009

Upcoming Dates

* Monday, April 27th: If You Give a Pig a Pancake Field Trip
We will be going to the Flint Center on Monday. Mr. Feve (Emilie’s father) will be coming with our class. We will return by lunchtime to Eaton.

* Friday, May 1st: Scholastic Book Orders Due
Please write ONE check payable to Scholastic Book Clubs if you are interested in purchasing books from the May catalogs.

* Friday, May 8th: First Grade Musical - 2:00pm in the MP Room
On Monday, I will be sending home a costume list for your child. Please bring the clothes in a bag labeled with his/her name by the following Monday, May 4th. We will be keeping the clothes at school to ensure that everyone has their outfit on the musical day. They will take their clothes home on Friday.

* Monday, May 18th: San Francisco Zoo Field Trip
Attached to today’s newsletter is a permission slip for the SF zoo. Please sign and return the form by next Friday. We are able to take 3 parent chaperones, who will be in charge of a group of students to explore the zoo together during the day.

* Thursday, May 21st: Intent to Return form due
Don’t forget to return this form! It asks you to share whether or not your child will be returning to Cupertino during the next school year. Please fill it out as soon as you can!

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Dear Families,

Welcome back from vacation! I hope you had a great time last week. I spent most of the week taking care of errands, cleaning the house, and spending time with family and friends.

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Maya
Poem of the Week: Little Seeds We Sow in Spring
Song of the Week: The 50 States that Rhyme
Kindness is … taking care of our environment.
Word Wall: carry, kind, put, saw, butter, were, work, person
Next Week’s Sharing: Regular – something from another country
(at least 4 sentences memorized and picture/object to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 8 Our Earth – Week 3
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Predict/Infer, Conclusions
• Word Families: words that end with –ed and -ing
• Sounds: -ed and –ing words
• Grammar: Action words with -ed

• Math: We are continuing our chapter on time and calendars. We have been practicing reading and writing the time by hour and half hour. We read a story called Time To… and also completed a personal book describing different activities we do during the day. This helped us to practice drawing the time on clocks. We also learned about elapsed time and completed word problems together. Students practiced problems with the following equation: start time + how long (hours) = end time.

• Writing: We worked on Writer’s Workshop this week and some students are making really good progress. They are really practicing the skill of working independently and proofreading their own work.

• Science: We have moved on for learning about Air to learning about Weather. This week, we began pretending to be meteorologists and learned how to describe the weather each day. We learned vocabulary to describe the cloud cover (sunny, partly cloudy, overcast, or foggy), the precipitation (rainy, snowy, hail, or no precipitation), the wind (no wind, some wind, or strong wind), and the temperature (Fahrenheit). We made our own thermometers and practiced how to graph the temperature each day! It reached the 90’s this week!

• Social Studies: On Wednesday, it was Earth Day. To celebrate, we had an assembly called “Ocean Commotion” where we sang songs about animals and things in the ocean. We also talked about how we help the earth and our environment. Thanks for those of you who participated in the District Walk-to-School day and walked to school on Earth Day to help our environment!

• Computer: We continued illustrating and writing our adaptations of the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A few more weeks to go!

• Music: We are working really hard on our musical, which is in 2 weeks! Not only have we been practicing the songs, but now we are learning dances too! Please plan on attending May 8th!

• Free the Children Fundraiser: Thank you to those students who have already donated money to this fundraiser. One option that was given by the Student Council was that students are encouraged to do chores around the house to raise money to donate (for example, maybe they can earn 50 cents for helping in the garden). Also, they will be collecting used books in the next 2 weeks to donate as well.

Room 8 has traffic duty next week! All the classes at Eaton have an assigned week to help out our school bus circle, and next week is our turn! I placed a sign up sheet outside of our classroom. If you have not signed up yet, please look at the list and try to sign up one day (Monday – Friday). We need at least one parent volunteer for the Suisun parking lot 20 minutes before school (8:45-9:05am) and also 20 minutes after school (3:00-3:20pm) each day, so please help if you can! Thank you!

Friday, April 10, 2009

April 10, 2009

Upcoming Dates
* Monday, April 13th to Friday, April 17th: Spring Break
No school! Enjoy your vacation!

* Friday, April 24th: Spring Portraits & Cupertino Library
Order envelopes will be sent home the day before. These are individual pictures. In the afternoon we will be walking to the Cupertino Library. Please remember to send your child’s BLUE library card and practice his/her 4-digit PIN number! They will check out 2 books each and please return them to the library at your own convenience.

* Monday, April 27th: If You Give a Pig a Pancake Field Trip
Thank you for returning the permission slip for this field trip. We had several volunteers to chaperone, but unfortunately we can only take one parent on this trip. Mr. Feve (Emilie’s father) will be coming with our class. We will return by lunchtime to Eaton.

* Friday, May 8th: First Grade Musical (afternoon: Time TBD)
On Wednesday, I sent home a blue paper with all of the words to the songs that we will be performing. Please have your child practice memorizing the words.

* Thursday, May 21st: Intent to Return form due
In today’s Friday Folder, there is another paper that must be returned to Eaton School. It asks you to share whether or not your child will be returning to Cupertino during the next school year. Please fill it out and send it back to our class.

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Dear Families,

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Ryan
Poem of the Week: Baby Chick
Song of the Week: Water Cycle
Kindness is … offering free hugs.
Word Wall: always, arms, body, seven, eight, ready, warm
Next (2) Week’s Sharing: Riddle – something from Earth or nature
(at least 4 sentences memorized and picture/object to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 8 Our Earth – Week 2
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Evaluate, Topic/Main Idea
• Word Families: words that rhyme with out and down
• Sounds: vowel pairs ou, ow, and syllables
• Grammar: Present Tense

• Math: We finished up our chapter on addition and subtraction facts to 20 and started Chapter 11 in our math books on Time and Calendar. This week we talked about words such as before and after, and practiced sequencing events in order. We also learned how to write and tell time by the hour and half hour, and used the vocabulary words, minute hand and hour hand.

• Writing: Our second step in Writer’s Workshop is taking our outlines and drafting them. We practiced indenting our paragraphs and on Wednesday, we also reviewed the proper way to revise our writing, or make it better. First, we used a sample writing piece and tried to find different mistakes in capitalization, punctuation, or spelling. Then, we tried to fix our own writing and make it better.

• Circuit: This was our last weather circuit. We went to Mrs. Barelli’s classroom and she taught us about wind and air. We made a little pinwheel on pencils and brought them home on Tuesday.

• Science: In our Air and Weather unit, this week we explored air pressure and compression using syringes. We learned the parts of a syringe: the barrel and the plunger, and used plastic tubes and bottles to test how air moves. We found out that even though we can’t see air, air still takes up space. We even learned how to make a water fountain using air pressure and water. Yesterday, we used balloons and experimented with making our own rockets!

• Social Studies: One of our songs in music is about giving four hugs a day to people we love. We talked about how a hug cheers others up and that it makes people happy. We practiced asking for permission and giving others hugs around school. Also, our Eaton Student Council has begun our Sierra Leone fundraiser. This week’s challenge was to bring in 50 cents if you sleep in a bed every night. Children in Sierra Leone do not have beds to sleep in, so we talked about how we are very fortunate to have the homes that we have, and that we can help them by donating a little bit of money. This fundraiser will last until the end of the school year, so you can donate anytime.

• Computer: We continued illustrating and writing our adaptations of the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Students are slowly beginning to understand how to save their work and transfer pictures from Kidpix into their Powerpoint slides. This is difficult for many students because it requires them to go through several steps, however they are learning to independently navigate through the computer.

I hope you have a wonderful week off from school. I do not have any plans so I will be cleaning the house and relaxing with my family! See you in a week!

Friday, April 03, 2009

April 3, 2009

Upcoming Dates
* Friday, April 10th: April Scholastic Book Orders Due!
Attached to today’s newsletter are the April Book Orders. Please write ONE check payable to Scholastic Book Clubs by this Friday.

* Monday, April 13th to Friday, April 17th: Spring Break
No school! Enjoy your vacation!

* Monday, April 27th: If You Give a Pig a Pancake Field Trip
Thank you for returning the permission slip for this field trip. We had several volunteers to chaperone, but unfortunately we can only take one parent on this trip. Mr. Feve (Emilie’s father) will be coming with our class. We will return by lunchtime to Eaton.

* Friday, May 8th: First Grade Musical
More details will come, but mark your calendars for the first grade musical on Spring and Colors. The musical will be in the afternoon in the MP room. We will also be sending home words to the songs soon so that your child can practice at home!

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Dear Families,

Thank you for turning in our last Book-It reading logs for March. The pizza hut certificates expire on May 1st, so make sure to use them by that date. Even though we will not have the Book-It program anymore, please continue to read at least 15 minutes every day with your child!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Mai
Poem of the Week: The Winner
Song of the Week: Water Cycle
Kindness is … learning to reduce, reuse, and recycle
Word Wall: about, because, draw, happy, teacher, part, tiny
Next Week’s Sharing: Riddle – something shaped like an egg (oval)
(at least 4 sentences memorized and picture/object to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 8 Our Earth – Week 1
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Summarize, Categorize/Classify
• Word Families: adding –s, -ed, and -ing
• Sounds: base words and endings –s, -ed, -ing
• Grammar: Action Words

• Math: We are finishing up our chapter on addition and subtraction facts to 100. We practiced solving more word problems, and reviewed our “magic words” such as in all, altogether, how many more, left, etc. to help us determine if it is an addition or subtraction sentence. I am encouraging students to take their time to compute math problems accurately instead of rushing to finish fast.

• Writing: Most of us finished our outline on our autobiography writing this week. We learned how to write interesting facts about ourselves using a topic sentence, supporting facts, details, transition words, and a conclusion. Students are going to choose new topics to write about independently in Writer’s Workshop, and we still have a few children finishing up their Mitten stories.

• Circuit: For our weather circuit this week, we went to Mrs. Nieveen’s class and she taught us about different clouds. We used cotton balls and different types of strings to show cumulus, stratus, nimbostratus, and cirrus clouds.

• Science: In our Air and Weather unit, this week we explored how we see air in water. We experimented with vials and water to discover how bubbles are made, and we also tried to trap air in the vial and not let any water inside. In the next activity, we made parachutes and learned about air resistance. Also, we are starting to learn about the life cycle of frogs and toads. We began reading stories about frogs and learned facts about how frogs grow from eggs to tadpoles to froglets and frogs.

• Social Studies: Our kindness sentence this week went along with our sharing for the week. We learned about reducing, reusing, and recycling to help our Earth. It was great to hear everyone’s sharing because we saw many examples of objects we can recycle, and ways to reuse different cans or bottles.

• Computer: We are staring a long-term project in computer lab using the software program, Powerpoint. We will be illustrating and writing our adaptations of the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. At the end of the year, we will print out our stories and bind them into books to take home.

• Assembly: We had a special assembly this week to learn about an organization called Free the Children. We learned about children around the world and found out how we can help specifically the poorest place in the world, Sierra Leone. It was important to see pictures of how Eaton looks so different from schools around the world. The Eaton Student Council will be sharing with us how we will raise money and materials for Sierra Leone children.

Enjoy the weekend and I will see you on Monday!