Despite the cold we had a great field trip today. Children had an opportunity to collect sap, learn about how sap is boiled into syrup, and sample different kinds of syrup. We also learned how Native Americans would have made syrup without the technology that is available today. Thank you to our chaperones Lindsay Jernigan, Amanda Kalichstein, and Erika Graham.

The weather looks promising for our field trip on Friday, although it may be cool. We will be outside the entire time- please make sure your child has appropriate clothing: either winter boots or mud boots, a warm jacket, hats and mittens. We will leave school at 8:10 and have snack on the bus. Please send a simple snack and water bottle. Children who usually get hot snack will be able to take this on the bus. We should be back at school by 11:30 in time for lunch.

Emily Church shared a wonderful book with me, What Does Peace Feel Like? and this week as part of our exploration of the five senses we have been talking about peace in relation to each of these senses. What does peace look like, smell like, taste like, feel like and sound like? Some of the thoughts children have shared include peace smells like warm soil, peace sounds like the ocean, peace tastes like honey, peace looks like a sunset over the flowers, and peace feels like a cool breeze. Yesterday everyone had an opportunity to create a water color painting for one of their peace images. Ask your children what they painted.

This morning Marian Moore, who is our district dental hygienist, met with half of they class to talk about good dental hygiene. I was in the library with the other half of the class, but it looked like the kids working with Marian were having fun. She will be back in two weeks to meet with the second half of the class.

OUR FIELD TRIP IS NEXT FRIDAY, MARCH 30TH. We will leave school at 8:10 and should be back for lunch. Please remember to send in $5 if you haven't already.

Report cards will be coming home tomorrow. I look forward to meeting with all of you on Thursday or Friday. Class pictures have finally arrived and I will send these tomorrow as well.

We have had a great focus on non-fiction writing during Writer's Workshop and read aloud times. Some of this has been tied in to our upcoming maple sugar field trip and our ongoing exploration of the five senses. In addition, everyone has now chosen an animal to write about. The information students record will be used for a project they will work on in the computer lab. Ask your children what animals they chose. Have you ever heard of a moloch?

Spring seems to officially be here, but please still stay mindful of the weather. The playground is apt to be muddy and with our early morning recess, it can still be quite chilly.

Please remember to send in $5 for our Audubon field trip!

I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation. It was nice to finally have some snow, although it feels like spring is really coming now. We have a Maple Sugaring field trip scheduled for Friday, March 30th at the Green Mountain Audubon Center in Huntington. There is a fee of $5 per child, which I will be collecting any time between now and the 30th. It would also be wonderful to have a few chaperones for the trip. We will leave school around 8:00 and should be back by 11:30. Let me know if you are interested in joining us.

If you haven't signed up for a conference already you can do so until Friday using the online scheduler. There is a link to this on the school's web page. Conferences will take place on the afternoon/evening of March 15th and the morning of the 16th.

Report cards will come home shortly after our return from vacation and conferences are scheduled for the afternoon and evening of Thursday, March 15th, and the morning of Friday, March 16th. The online scheduler for conferences opens up tomorrow. PLEASE NOTE the times on my conference schedule that say available but have a big red x are available. Feel free to schedule a conference during those times. If there is a conflict with the given times, please let me know. I happy to arrange a meeting on a different morning or at 12:00 some other day. I hope everyone has a wonderful vacation, whatever you may be doing. It's hard to believe we will be well on our way into spring when we return.

We began our day with a kick off assembly for our Bread and Puppet residency, with a focus on community. Immediately after that we had our first workshop with the artists from Bread and Puppet. Students took part in acting out a story about a haunted house. See if your child remembers who it was haunted by! Children then had a chance to become various animal puppets. We will have two more sessions over the next six days. Because of scheduling, our class will not be part of the final performance, (the benefit of this is that we can be completely immersed in the process without worrying about a final product), but you are welcome to bring your child back for this next Thursday afternoon. The official time has not yet been determined.

After assembly, puppet workshop, and health class everyone was ready for some unstructured time. We spent an hour outside making the most of the springlike temperatures, playing chase (ask your child who the chaser was!), discovering really cool rocks that have been buried in ice, and contemplating what might be living in one of the triangle trees. With so much going on it was hard to come back inside!