We had a fantastic second day of school.  Along with reviewing and practicing routines that we began yesterday we spent some time exploring math materials, reading quietly to ourselves, and working with third and fourth grade learning partners.  We will meet with children from Mrs. Hale's class each Thursday, a time that both kindergarteners and the older children grow to love.  Most often children will read with their partners, but we will also participate in a variety of other activities.  Today groups worked together on an outdoor scavenger hunt.  Ask your child to share some of things they found!

If you have not yet returned your child's red folder (sent home yesterday) with loads of general paper work for the school, please do so as soon as possible.  This helps Kathi tremendously.  Also, if at all possible it is extremely helpful for children to have water bottles.  It has been hot the last couple of days and it is hard to adequately quench thirst with the water fountain.  Finally, we have gym on Mondays and Thursdays and children need to have good shoes for running on these days.  Please no flip-flops, sandals or boots!

We had a great first day! Getting a school year under way takes a lot of patience on the part of students, with a lot of time spent listening and learning routines.  Everything from walking in line to eating in the lunch room needs to be taught and modeled, which will help ensure future success and independence.  Much of our time in the coming weeks will be spent reviewing expectations and practicing routines.  I greatly appreciate the effort and patience this requires from children!  Everyone in the class earned at least one ticket today for being safe, kind, responsible, or engaged.  These tickets are then traded in for rocks that will be collected as a whole school. Look for the bucket in the main lobby.

We will also focus much of our attention on getting to know each other and building our classroom community.

In your child’s bag  today you will find a yellow folder with a note of explanation inside, along with a paper bag that will be your child's artifact bag (also explained in the folder note.)  You should also find a red folder from Kathi with general school information and paper work.  These can be returned directly to Kathi at the front desk, or you can send them in your child's backpack and I will get them to her.  Thank you for all you do to help get the school year under way!

I have finally finished burning the ECO slideshow and everyone should have a copy in their backpacks today.  After a whirlwind month of May, we are keeping to our usual routines during these two weeks in June, with some end of the year twists.  Uno, rocket, and subtraction bowling are popular math stations, and our district states of matter assessment involves popsicles, with the directions explicitly stating that there should be extra popsicles on hand for when the students have finished the assessment! Hopefully we will have one more warmish day for this.  We are wrapping up one last project in the computer lab and I am finishing assessments in math and literacy.  It's hard to believe there are just eight days left!

We had three guests visit our class today, Rene, who is blind and deaf, his interpreter Rachel, who is deaf, and Keegan's mom, Stephanie Cramer, who interpreted Rachel's signs to us.  They brought several pairs of special goggles that allowed us to see the world as Rene does.  They also brought a large bag of stuffed animals and taught us the sign for each one.  Ask your child to share some of these with you!  The children had many questions for Rene and it was fascinating to see how Rachel communicated these questions to him by signing into his hands.  A huge thank you to Stephanie for arranging this visit!  Enjoy the long weekend!

I am working on making a disc of our ECO slide show for everyone to have and I will send these home when I am done.  Our last ECO session is next Wednesday, May 29th.  We would like to extend the day and stay out until 1:00 as long as the weather looks reasonable.  This means we would eat lunch in the forest.  Students can get a bag lunch through the hot lunch program, but I would need to know who plans to do this by next Monday so the lunches can be prepared.

Last week we began our last science unit exploring states of matter.  We began by sorting several jars into solids and liquids and then noticing things that were true of all the liquids and all of the solids.  We noticed that liquids take the shape of the container they are in and have a flat surface in the container, while solids will hold onto their shape.  From there we have been exploring liquids and water.  We began by experimenting with drops of water on plastic plates and today children had a chance to explore drops of water on different surfaces:  paper towel, construction paper, waxed paper, and tin foil.   Some things we noticed were the drops stay really round on the wax paper, they spread out on the tinfoil, and they soak into the paper towel and construction paper.  It is easy to move drops on the wax paper because they are so round and don't soak in at all.

We had a whirlwind week with our Food Residency.  Hopefully you had an opportunity to hear a bit about our trip to the Ward Farm, our time cooking either muffins or cheese, and our visit from the baby chicks!  Everyone did a fantastic job managing the changes in routine.

Next Friday, May 17th, our class is responsible for the all school assembly at 7:40.  We will be sharing a slideshow of our ECO days and another slideshow showing part of each child's nature name project that we did in the computer lab.  Both are narrated by students.  If for some reason you can't make it I am hoping to give each child a disc with both slideshows.  There is also an all school music concert on Thursday, May 23rd at 6:00.  Have a wonderful weekend and a lovely Mother's Day!

Baby chicks!

Learning about raising chickens.

Making banana flax muffins.

Measuring and stirring dry ingredients.

Chicken and egg problem solving!

Using bears to represent chickens and eggs.

Next week the entire school will be participating in a Food Artists Residency.  This will take place on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 10:00 to 11:30 at a variety of locations throughout the valley.  Today in your child's backpack is specific information about what he or she will be doing on each of the days.  The kindergarteners will all be visiting Stan and Helen Ward's farm on Monday, and we will all go to Soaring Ridge Farm on Thursday.  On Tuesday some of us will participate in cheese making and some of us will be cooking.  It looks like an exciting week!