This week!

Just a reminder that tomorrow is our last conference.  Please plan on attending.  If you are unsure of your time, please email me back and I can remind you.   You do not need to bring the binder back, as it is yours to keep unless you just want to go over the work in it.  

On Thursday, we are having water day.  It starts at 9:30 and the kids should just arrive in their swim suits with sunscreen already applied.   There is no need to pack lunch since we are dismissing at noon!  We will also have a snack here so you do not need to pack fruit break.

We will meet back at Hollins at 6 for Celebration.  Some of us will be there at 5 outside having a picnic.  See quicknotes for more info, or ask at conference.  

If you are not planning on attending, please let  me know.  

See you tomorrow.  

Thanks!

summer suggestions!

Notes......

Thank you very much for your help with the field trip.  We have enough drivers and are excited about going to the farm!  Remember to pack a good lunch that day.  Hopefully we will have a special treat of s'mores for after lunch......  
As we wind down the school year, we are enjoying some time to "just read"!  We are all choosing books that we like and reading!  We are also going to look at some great authors and illustrators and incorporate some art work into our reading.  We will start with Eric Carle.
In math, we are going to work on fractions and measurement.  We have some games to play to reinforce what we learn.
We also will be presenting our poems that went home last week.  Every child will stand up and read or recite their poem on Friday.  Keep practicing!  If you need another copy let me know.

Or latest visitor has been Hopkins!  He came to school for 2 weeks.  He is a kitten that I took in whose mom did not make it.  We gave him lots of attention and love.  He has started staying at home now that he is actually 8 weeks old.  He may make a surprise visit again before the end of the year.

I am very proud of everyone!  They did a wonderful job in the play.  Our next big performance will be at Celebration on June 7th.  Please plan on attending!

notes and more notes.......

Arts festival is upon us and we are working hard on rehearsals.  For the girls, they should wear a tank top with spaghetti straps or they can just take off their top to slip on the dress that is their costume.  They will also be wearing tights.  The dress and tights are already here.  The girls should also arrive with their hair back in a ponytail so that it is out of their face.  The boys are wearing tee shirts and their pants that they brought in.

Their art projects will be on display, so plan on walking through the art show either before or after the plays.  Remember that dismissal will be from Hollins after the performances on Friday.
Please pack a heavy fruit break in a disposable container on Friday.  There will not be a lunch.  You may take your child after the plays are over.  There are a total of 4 plays taking place and it will not be longer than 2 hours.  Start time is at 10:30 am.

Next week we have a field trip to the farm.  I would love to know who is planning on coming that day.  I will send home directions on Monday.  You are more than welcome to meet us there with your child.  If we have enough parents going, then I will not need to drive the school bus.  Remember siblings are invited as well.  Bring a picnic, a blanket and some water shoes.  It will be fun.

Our last field trip is on the 29th and that is our luncheon to El Rodeo with Elena.  You may send in the money any time next week.  It is $7.00 cash.  Thanks   Also, please let me know if you are meeting us there.

May News

*We are in charge of the bake sale this Wednesday.  Please send in cookies, ice cream sandwiches or cupcakes.  These are the biggest sellers.
*We have a family field trip scheduled for May 24th.  It is to my farm.  You are welcome to meet us there or we will take your child.  The rain date for this trip will be May 31st.
*Arts Festival is coming up on May 18th.  We will dismiss from Hollins after this.  There is no afterschool that day.  We have practice on the 15th - 18th so please be here.
*On the 29th, our class will go to El Rodeo for lunch.  The cost is $7.00.  Please send in cash that day.  You are also welcome to attend.  Please let us know ahead of time if you are attending.  The time is 12 - 1:30.

The Strawberry Festival is this weekend!  Please attend and support our great festival.  Don't forget to sign up for volunteering as well.  We are still in need of 114 shifts to be covered.  Remember that each parent is responsible for 12 hours.  I will be there tonight, tomorrow afternoon and all day Saturday!  It will be lots of fun!!!!!!!!!!!

We are having a blast and are continuing to learn every day!  We are working with magnets and motion in science, reviewing math facts and starting to read fables!

Thanks for all that you do to help us have great days!

Needs!

We are in need of paper towel and toliet paper rolls, empty ones of course.  We could also use 1 litre and 2 litre bottles.  Again, empty.  Thanks

Creative use of blocks for math...

Sharing our habitats....

Welcome back!

We are celebrating Earth Day this week by learning about ways that we can save the Earth! We now know that we should save water by turning water off while we are brushing our teeth, that taking a shower instead of a bath saves water and that we should turn off and unplug things when we at not using them. We read "Ready Freddy saves the Earth" and learned about recycling, reducing and reusing. We are practicing what we learned in our class and hopefully at home too! In math we are comparing numbers, working on addition and subtraction and drawing word problems. Do not forget to sign up for Strawbery Festival volunteer shifts! Each parent is expected to put in 12 hours of volunteer time. It really is a lot of fun! I am volunteering Thursday, Friday and all day Saturday with kids games. feel free to sign up for kids games and help me out! Don't forget to sell your advance tickets or just plan on using them yourself! You may send in one for your child to use on Friday the 4th when we go to Hollins to get our own strawberry shortcakes. Our last field trip has been designed to include families. We are going to my farm in Wirtz, 30 minutes from Roanoke. Siblings and parents are invited and encouraged to attend. We will pet the horses and goats, look for crawfish and take a walk in the woods to see a yurt! We went in the Fall and had a blast! The date for this trip is May 25th and a rain date has been set for the next day, May 26th. We will make this an all day field trip and you can meet us there or we can leave from school. We will do picnic lunches. More details will come. We are practicing for the play every Monday from 1:30 - 3:00 and on Fridays from 9 - 10:00 during the month of April. In May we will practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please make sure that your child is here for these practices. A note went home this week requesting items for costumes. If you did not get yours, please contact me or Louise Montgomery. the kids are very excited about the play. This will be performed on May 18th, so mark your calendar to be here for it. Invite friends and relatives to see your child shine! We will also have an art show that morning showcasing their work.

Disappearing Egg

This Week:

Reminders for the week:

*We are going on a fieldtrip to the library tomorrow to hear Matthew Faulkner read.  We leave at 9 and return by 12.

*Tuesday is “zero waste” lunch day.  Please use disposable containers or recycled materials.  Also, pack a fruit break that can be easily taken with us on our field trip.

*On Friday, we will have our “thinga-ma-jigger” parade at 10:30.  It should only last 15 minutes or so, but all are welcome. 

*Portfolios come home today and should be brought back with you to the conference on Thursday.  Remember, no school Thursday due to conferences.

Also this week and next.....

Just a reminder that we will be going to Cycle Systems on Thursday and we are leaving right around 9.  Please bring in a bag of cans if you have any so that we can turn them in to be recycled and get paid for the aluminum.  

We are also beginning work on our thing-a-ma-jig.  We need all sorts of recyclables.  We will be incorporating these into a big contraption during our science time.  We will also be reading the Lorax and beginning our seeds inside for our small garden.  Due to construction, we may be gardening in a large container and only planting things that will mature before end of school.

We will read "Eyes Wide Shut", "If I Ran the Zoo", "Oh the Places You'll Go" and the The Sleep Book this week.  We will all wear sunglasses on Monday for Eyes Wide Shut.  We decorated these last week.
Feel free to dress up as your favorite zoo animal on Tuesday and on Friday, wear your pajamas to school. If anyone wants to come in and read to us on Friday, they are welcome.  We will also have a few teachers come in to guest read as well.

Next week, we read the Lorax on Tuesday and it will be "zero waste lunch day".  School will be closed on Thursday for conferences.  Portfolios will come home on Monday.  On Friday the 30th, we will have our parade of Thing-a-ma-jiggers.  Feel free to come and watch.  

Don't forget to sign up for Baking Day this Friday.  The sign up sheet can be accessed via our school web-site.

Eggs and more eggs! And other odds and ends...

We are short on paper towels and glue sticks.  If you could each send in a pack of paper towels and glue sticks, we will have enough to make it through the rest of the year.  We could also use some erasers.  We keep eating ours.  (really!)  The pencils erasers keep disappearing and the erasers that we put on them keep getting torn apart.  If anyone has more “junk” that we can use next week for planting and building out thing-a-ma-jigger please send it in.  This may be a great time to clean out that closet or go through the recycle bin.  We will begin building on Monday. 

The egg drop experiment was a huge success.  We all did a great job!  There were many successful drops and many learning experiences as well.  We also enjoyed our naked eggs and the disappearing egg trick.  These are experiments that your child can replicate at home with some help.  Ask them about them. 

Today we ate “green eggs and ham”.  We also had some fried hash browns and a green cookie to celebrate St. Patricks Day.  All in all, it was a magnificent day!!!!!! 

I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend! 

March, In like a lion........

Okay, get ready, get set, GO!  March is taking off and we have so much planned that I have my running shoes on just to keep up.  With the celebration of Dr. Seuss, we have all sorts of fun days planned.  A calendar was sent home yesterday which lists the stories that we will be reading and the fun days that we have planned.  Be sure to look at it so that you don't miss out on crazy sock day or sleep day.  

We will also be having Green Eggs and Ham on the 16th.  I can not wait for that and for the Egg Drop which will follow.  If anyone has an extra dozen or so eggs that they would like to send in, we can use them.  We are also doing "eggsperiments" that week.  It should be "eggspecially" fun!

We will heading to Cycle Systems to learn about recycling on the 22nd.  Please save all cans and send them in that week.  We will take them in and turn them in for money when we go to Cycle Systems.

The kids should be filling out their reading logs.  We will record these weekly on Fridays.  So make sure that they come back each Friday.  

We are saving items that we might be able to use to build our "thing-a-ma-jig".  If you have items around your house, do not throw them away, send them in.  We will start building the week of the 19th.  These items can be packing peanuts, cardboard, plastics, anything that might be useful.  

Thanks!!!!!!

Oh, and today we read Bartholomew and the ooblek.  Check their backpacks if they have not already brought out their ziploc bag of goo.  We had a lot of fun with Tulie and Beth's class today when we mixed up cornstarch and water with some food coloring.  What a strange mixture it makes!  

Enjoy!!!!!!

Odds and Ends......

Hopefully you are enjoying the sunny days!  We have one last day of February left and we will be going to the nursing home to sing.  We leave at 1:30 and will get back at 3:10.    The next day brings us to March, which starts our celebration of Dr. Seuss and all of his books.  Please read with your child daily for at least 10 minutes and record it onto the log that was sent home yesterday.  We are charting as a school all of the time that we have read.  We have special activities scheduled for each week, these can be found in Quick Notes.

We will be visiting Cycle Systems on March 22nd in the AM.  On the 27th of March we will visit the Roanoke library for an Author's reading.  More details on that later.

We are continuing to work on addition and subtraction facts and are incorporating word problems into the mix.  We are writing a narrative about ourselves and reading daily.  We just finished up habitats in Science and will begin learning about plants and gardening.  We will use our money made at the bake sale to buy seeds and plants.  

Let me know if you have any questions about what we are doing in class.....

Hope to see all at the spaghetti dinner on Thursday!

Rooster Day

In a galaxy, far, far away at Community School there was a rooster named Flynn visiting.  It was fun, especially when he crowed, which was often.  It was yucky when he pooped, which was not so often.  It was chaos when he made lots of noise.  It was cool when he flew.  Keri put him in the cage with the bunnies.  The bunnies did not like it!  Flynn was very cute and very pretty.  He was very funny!  He liked us!  We loved having him visit!  The rooster gets to go home with James to live at his house.  He will like his chicken and his chicken shed.

by Keri's Class

February - Beary nice!!!!!!

We are working hard on habitats!  Together with Emily's class, we are building habitats for our bears.  We have divided up and are studying polar bears, pandas and grizzly bears.  We have found out some interesting facts about our bears.

We are also busy using our touch points to subtract and have been counting down from 50.  Some of the second years are also learning about regrouping and subtracting 2 digit numbers.

We have been reading about bears during our reading time.  Polar Bears Past Bedtime, a Magic Tree House book and some shorter books as well.  We have been reading many versions of the Three Bears and have retold Goldilocks and the Three Bears story in our own writing.

Thank you very much for the soup!  We donated several bags of soup to the seniors via LOA and they were very excited to get our donation.  We have also made Valentines to give to some of the adults who live at Hollin's Manor with our buddies from RuthAnn's room.  We also gave them cards at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The adults were very excited to receive these cards.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and we are getting ready by decorating our envelopes.  We also are doing several activities today and tomorrow and are very excited to be celebrating with our friends.  It is also the 100th day tomorrow.  Can you believe that we have been in school 100 days?  I can't!

Remember to read with your child and encourage them to read for 5-10 minutes daily.  We have begun word study and they should be bringing home a copy of their sort on Monday or Tuesday so you will know what words we are working on.  Right now, they are short vowel words with a digraph, sh, ch or wh beginning.

Jan. 12

It is almost conference time again!  My, how the year is flying by......  Hopefully the times that were given earlier this year work with everyone.  If you cannot make your time, please let me know now so we can work on rescheduling.  The schedule will be posted in Quick Notes on the 17th.  If you do not remember your time, email me and I can tell you.

We are working on bears!  Everything bears!   Reading bear books, studying habitats for bears and doing some science activities involving cold and hot.
We have worked on time to the half hour, and quarter hour for those that were ready.  We are working on subtraction of numbers through 19.  I have really tried to get everyone comfortable with their addition facts.  If you have time in the car, practice doubles through 10, sums of 10 and 9 plus.  The memorization and understanding of these facts will really help with subtraction.
We are reading daily here at school and you are reading at home as well.  I am really seeing progress in their reading skills.   They are also doing a great job with their journaling and are better able to spell what they hear in their writing.

Friday is a field trip to Hollins for the local hero award ceremony in the afternoon.  Monday is a holiday and there is no school.

Welcome back! Where did the warm days of December go? Only a few more days of extreme cold to go, for this round anyway! That being said, remember that we are outside for at least a part of every day. Please send in gloves, hats, warm coats, etc that they can wear outside. I invested in a huge parka and really warm boots last year after spending a few cold recess duties freezing. We are so glad to be back together. We have welcomed Flint and Gerald to our room, well outside actually! They are the bunnies that are in the pen outside of our classroom. The kids are sharing their leftovers with them and waiting to have a chance to hold them. We will learn about animal care and animal adaptation through the care of our bunnies. We are also working on telling time to the half or quarter hour. If you happen to have an analog clock, have your child practice. We are working on our decoding skills with word study. We will work as a group this week, and next week each child will have their own list of words to work on. Remember to continue to read with your son or daughter daily. They are really making progress with their reading. Let me know if you have any questions about what we are doing. There is no school on January 16th. Conferences are January 27th.