Today Hannah shared her new baby sister with us.  She is almost two weeks old and we were amazed at how tiny and delicate she is!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  I spent time with my family in New Hampshire and had a couple of quiet days at home as well.  My own children were very appreciative of not having to get up quite so early!

Now that we are back in school we have been quite busy.  In math we are well into a unit on patterns and have been spending lots of time identifying, creating, and continuing various patterns.  This week we have worked on breaking patterns into their individual units (red, orange or AB).   We are also continuing our work with numbers, identifying, counting, representing and sequencing numbers greater than 10.  For many children moving from one decade to another is challenging (29 to 30 etc.)  To reinforce this skill we have been playing a game called POP that my son taught me.  We count a given sequence around the circle over and over, for example 18-23.  The last number is the POP number and that person gets to line up, get ready for lunch etc.  We keep playing until one or two students are left.  The children really enjoy this game and are getting good counting practice as well.  We have also been playing Rocket to practice sequencing numbers.  This game was included in the packet I sent home earlier in the year.  We began playing with a 12 sided die and have moved on to a 20 sided die, which is a bit more challenging.

I have started meeting with small groups during reading time.  I generally meet with four students at a time and the groups are flexible and constantly changing.  While I am meeting with groups the other children are quietly reading, either predictable books from their book bags or books from our classroom library.  We are continuing to work on sight words in a variety of ways:  spelling them with our bodies, writing them, finding them in the morning message or in songs or chants, and reading them on sight word rings.  I am amazed by the progress of this group.  They are extremely motivated!

In science we have continued to talk about rocks and so many children have brought in wonderful rocks to share, spurring more conversation.  Yesterday pairs of rocks were passed out to the class.  Each child drew his or her rock with as much detail as possible and chose three words to describe it.   They then took turns sharing their descriptions and trying to find the person who had the same rock.    Today we used clay to explore the ways that rocks are constantly changing.

Winter is here and we still go outside twice a day.  Please make sure your child comes with warm boots, jacket, hat and mittens every day. I also strongly encourage snow pants- the playground is much more fun when children are warm and dry.

Today Michael's mom, Amy Denis, came in to teach the class about gun safety.  We discussed different reasons people may have guns at their houses and the importance of treating guns seriously.  Because guns can be so harmful, she cautioned us about pretending to use guns in a way that is threatening to others.  Most importantly she talked to the children about what to do if they ever come across a gun:  stop, don't touch the gun, walk away, and tell an adult.  Amy shared the addresses of two valuable websites that people may be interested in.  The first, http://kidshealth.org/kid/watch/house/gun_safety.html#  came in gives a little more information about gun safety, and the second,  www.projectchildsafe.org   explains how parents can get free gun locks from local police departments.

Thank you to everyone for attending conferences.  I hope you all have a peaceful and relaxing holiday!

We had another fabulous day in the forest.  Despite the frosty weather everyone stayed warm.  Thank you for sending your children well prepared.  After making frost angels and playing a game, we headed into the forest.  Children were eager to check on their mouse houses, most of which were still intact.  Several children thought they saw evidence of visitors to their houses!  While we ate our snacks we talked about a recipe for a forest.  We then spent a large chunk of time in small groups gathering ingredients for this recipe.  We ended by writing in our ECO journals before our walk back to school.  Thank you to our volunteers, Sheila, Matthew's mom and Marya, Lucy's grandma  We were also joined by Lindsay Vandal, who works for North Branch Nature Center and runs ECO programs for Union Elementary School in Montpelier.  Our next ECO session is Wednesday, December 7th (3 weeks away because of the Thanksgiving break).  Children will have an opportunity to use potato peelers to peel bark from sticks during this session.  Today in your child's folder is a tool permission form that will need to be returned for your child to do this.  Please let me know if you would like to join us!  I will see you all in the next few days for conferences.

We have ECO tomorrow!  We will be retuning to the Wu Forest.  While it looks to be a sunny day it will also be chilly.  Please have your child wear winter boots, snow pants, winter jacket, hat and mittens.  Also please send a water bottle and snack.

Next week will be a busy week for us.  On Tuesday we have been graciously invited to visit TD Bank North.  We will leave school at 9:45 and take the bus to the bank.  We will be at the bank for about 30 minutes, getting a tour and learning about what banks are and how they help people.   We should be back at school by 11:00.  On Wednesday we have ECO and will be traveling to the Wu Forest again- please send your child with warm clothing!  On Thursday we have the school-wide Thanksgiving luncheon.  Parents are invited and everyone has a sign up form in their backpacks today.

For the past month or so we have been trying to earn cubes during specials.  This has been a more challenging time of day for the class.  We have particularly been working on listening and being respectful.  Our goal was to fill a jar to the halfway point and this afternoon we had an extra long choice time and special snack (cider and pretzels) to celebrate meeting this goal.

I have been busily assessing students and am right in the middle of completing report cards, which will go home next week.  Conferences will also be held next week and the Monday and Tuesday of the following week.  In the next 24 hours or so you should receive information about scheduling a conference using our online scheduler.  I will be offering conferences Thursday, November 15th, Monday, November 19th, and Tuesday, November 20th.  If for some reason none of the available slots work for you please let me know and we can make arrangements to meet at a different time.  I'm looking forward to meeting with all of you soon!

Some of the students in our class have been expressing a strong interest in homework- begging for it in fact!  I will never send mandatory homework, but since there is interest I will start sending some of the things we work on in class for extra practice at home if children are interested.  The interest seems to be mostly in worksheet kinds of things, so this is what I will try to send.  If your child does the work and would like to bring it back to me any time, I'd love to see it.  Today I have sent home a couple of math pages.  The only materials needed are dice or a deck of cards.  We have done similar things during math stations so the tasks should be familiar.  While we have done a lot of one more, one less work, the + and - symbols are still relatively new, so children may need reminders about these.  Other great things to work on at home are counting from 0-100, and counting starting from any number, say beginning at 23, or 47.  Practicing naming numbers one more and one less than a given number is also a great activity.  We do this at school by rolling a die, saying the number, and quickly saying what comes just before or just after.  This gets more challenging with many sided die.

We have completed our science unit on living and non-living things and today we began our next unit on rocks.  I have asked everyone to bring in a rock by early next week.  Any rock works!