Perhaps your child has mentioned that we have a helper every morning.  Colleen Todd joins us from 8:00- 11:30 and helps us in every way possible!

We have slowly begun sharing our artifact bags.  This is a great opportunity for children to practice really listening to their peers so they can learn something about them.  We have been sharing one at a time throughout the day to optimize good listening.  We will keep sharing several each day until everyone has had a turn.

This week we have been doing stations during what will become our math station time.  We have started with 4 stations:  blocks, sand table, scientific drawings of caterpillars and chrysalises, and cutting (to practice scissor use).  We have been practicing staying in our station for the whole time (10 minutes to start), using an appropriate volume, and working with other children in our station.

Today we officially began Writers Workshop by reading the book Library Mouse.  In this book, a mouse Sam writes books for the children who visit the library and helps them realize that writing is fun and not so hard if you write about what you know.  We brainstormed ideas of what we could write about and then talked about starting with a picture and adding details.  Several children mentioned that they can't yet write words.  No big deal!  We can write pretend words or letters we know (and while this is all going on Colleen and I will help scribe.) We wrote for 15 minutes and many children were not ready to stop!

In an effort to streamline and simplify things the school district is asking that all staff begin using new school email accounts.  I will continue to use the email address I already shared as a personal account, but for work I will begin using abeattie@waitsfieldschool.org.  It would be great if you could use this account to contact me, although I will still get messages at the old account.