Weekly News

IMPORTANT DATES
•    Thursday. December 8th: Early Release Day, School ends at 12:30,
    Lunch is served.
•    Wednesday. December 14th: Early Release Day, School ends at 12:30,
    Lunch is served.
•    Friday, December 23rd: Winter Vacation begins at 2:20 pm. This is a full school day. Lunch is served.


COLD WEATHER and SLIPPERS
We will go outside for recess every day, unless it is raining. As the weather gets colder, please be sure to send appropriate outdoor clothing. This currently includes sweatshirts, jackets, and sometimes rain boots. In the winter, this will include heavy winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves, boots and snow pants.

Also, during the chilly boot-weather months, it is an option to bring slippers (with rubber, non-slip soles) to school. This will make foe easy indoor-outdoor transitions, and give a warm and cozy feeling to the day. Your child is welcome to bring slippers (labeled with his or her name) and leave them in the classroom rather than take them home every day. We will have a place in the clasrroom to store slippers instead of leaving them in cubbies overnight.
   
If your child is missing a jacket or sweatshirt, please check the school Lost and Found, across the hall from the Main office.

MATH
We began chapter 4 of Think Math this. This chapter focuses on addition and subtraction. We are starting by reviewing the stories and what they mean in real life. Then we will move into more practice of facts. Stories that are particularly tricky to understand and figure out are ones with a missing addend (There are 10 apples in the tree 4 are red, some are green. How many are green?) and “How many more?” questions ( John has 4 books. Beth has 7. How many more books does Beth have than John?). We will do lots of acting out and drawing of these types of problems.

WORD WALL WORDS: no, come, kick, black, clock
This week, three of our Word Wall Words have a ck at the end. We learned that these two letters stick together to make the “k” sound. 

SCIENCE
This week, we read a funny story called Mr . Archimedes’ Bath about a man who tried to figure out how the water always spilled out of his tub when lots of animals came in. This was a great introduction to our water displacement experiment. We started with jars of water. We observed what happened when we placed one marble in the jar and when we placed 12 marbles in the jar. We discussed the concept of displacement

WRITING
This week, we discussed the difference between capital letters and lower case letters. We identified types of words that begin with capital letters (names, the word I, names of cities and places, and the first letter of the first word of a sentence).

COMMUNITY
The Devotion Calendars, featuring your child’s artwork, went to print last week. Green Devotion Calendar order forms were sent home this week.  We are selling the calendars for $5 each and all profits will be donated to Heifer International. Order forms can be turned in to the classroom or the main office. If you need additional order forms, just let us know.

Last week, we discussed the idea of needs vs. wants. We defined needs as things that everyone should have to live (food, shelter, rest, water, warmth, etc.) and wants as extra things that are nice to have but you can live without them (toys, dessert, tv’s, etc.). We also read Beatrice’s Goat, which illustrates how giving one goat to one family can impact a whole town! We discussed the ways that Heifer International helps people all over the world. For more information on this organization, please read the attached letter from Beatrice, the actual girl featured in Beatrice’s Goat, or check out their website: www.heifer.org 

SNACK and SNUNCH
On Early Release (conference days that end at 12:30pm), we will eat lunch but will not have snack. Our lunch is scheduled for 10:30am on these days, followed by recess.  This is a different schedule to get used to, and children might still be hungry after school. Your child might need to eat a bigger breakfast on these days, since our Snunch (Lunch at Snack time) is a little bit later then they are used to having snack. We have 3 more of these days in the fall and we will have four of these days in the spring.

ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
•    What happened to the water level when we placed 12 marbles in the jar of water?
•    What math game did you play with your partner this week?
•    What is one way that the goat (Mugisa) helped Beatrice and her family?