January 28, 2010

Upcoming Dates

* Friday, January 29th: Children’s Discovery Museum Field Trip – ALL KIDS ATTEND AM!
See cover page for more details.

* Monday, February 8th: Happy Hollow In-House Field Trip – ALL KIDS ATTEND AM!
All Kinders come from 9:00am – 12:20pm! Please arrange to pick up your child on time after school! For this in-house field trip, we don’t have to go anywhere! Happy Hollow will come to Eaton and do a presentation to our class, where they bring animals for us! Therefore, we won’t need any chaperones and kids won’t need to wear their red shirts. Please still bring your backpacks, snacks, and sharing as usual.

* Friday, February 12th: Valentine’s Day Party
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 Friday 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 28 cards (29 if they want one for themselves). Here are the students’ names in our class:
Aditi Aditya Caroline Chris Colleen Connor
Daniel David Edison Grace Jennifer Jewel
Kavya Keona Kristina Kumiko Lauren Leah
Matthew C. Matthew N. Michael Raphael Sara Sean
Shaunak Tanisha Woojin Yash Yuma

* Monday, February 15th to Friday, February 22nd: No School – Mid-Year Recess
Enjoy your week of vacation!

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Dear Families,

Since we have our field trip tomorrow, students will not be bringing their daily folders to school. Therefore, I’m sending the newsletter today instead. Other papers such as sharing or old homework/ classwork will be filed in next week’s Friday folder. Thank you for understanding!

Here are some highlights for the week:
• Star of the Week: Chris
(On our website under “Curriculum” and “Star of the Week.”)

• Letter of the Week: F
(You can see our computer center drawings in the “Classwork” section of our website.)

• Story of the Week: The Emperor’s Egg

• Language Arts: We read the story, The Way I Feel, this week. We talked about all the different feelings we learned from the book and practiced showing what our faces would look like with the different emotions. We also discussed how everyone experiences all sorts of feelings throughout the day and we should be sensitive to others. We completed a project where we chose three different feelings and wrote about situations in our lives that made us feel that way. Mrs. Rowe came to visit our classroom to observe this lesson!

• Writing: We started the week by reading our story of the week and brainstormed different facts we learned about penguins. Our journal entry on Monday was to write one of our favorite facts about penguins, using the sentence starter: Penguins ____________.

• Science: We are starting to read many stories and learn many facts about penguins. One of the facts we learned is about the continents on Earth. We learned that we live in North America and the Emperor penguins live on Antarctica. We also learned about the life of the male and female Empereor penguins, including how they take care of the chick and what they eat. We completed a project where we wrote three of our favorite facts and made a penguin book to decorate our writing. Everyday we repeat facts from what we have learned in class, and at the end of each unit, I individually ask students questions from our unit. It is important that students are listening and showing understanding of what we have learned. This is how I informally assess students on the report card.

• Math: This week we’ve been reviewing the concepts from our previous chapter. We made our addition and subtraction sentences using different real life situations, such as using our own bodies (how many boys + girls?) or different objects in the room. We practiced verbally saying our math stories. Students need to be able to tell their math stories independently!

• Computer Lab: We talked about weather and seasons this week in computer lab. We used a Kidspiration project to decide which types of clothing children should weather in different seasons. Students had to think about clothing for our head, torso, hands, legs, and feet. Some students finished the project, but we will have to continue it another session. Therefore, this lesson will not be posted on the website yet.

• Buddies: On Tuesday, we saw our fourth grade buddies from Ms. Allen’s class. We made a “double doodle” picture with our buddies. We each took turns to draw one shape or line and then our buddies had to add onto the picture. This was practice for students to learn to share and to be creative to transform their pictures into different things.

• Music: We saw Ms. Disney on Thursday to have our regular music class.

• Field Trip: Tomorrow we will be going on our field trip to the Children’s Discovery Museum. Thank you to all the chaperones who are coming with us. Please remember that if you would like to chaperone next time, you will need to have a current TB test on file in the office.

Another big thank you goes out this week to Raphael and his family! They gave us a generous gift card to Lakeshore to celebrate Raphael’s birthday with the class. We really appreciate your kindness! Thank you!

See you all tomorrow at 9:00am!