Important dates to remember:
12/11 – Winter Concert - Starts at 6:30 pm
Students should be here between 6:00 and 6:10 pm.
12/21 – Half Day – 12:00 Dismissal
12/24 – 1/02 – Winter Break
Classroom news:
Pre-K:
Our late October and November were a busy, fun time! We all dressed up as animals for Halloween and had a costume parade for treats. A big THANK YOU to all of our parents for making the day so special for our class!! In November our themes were friendship, manners, and the first Thanksgiving. We were all fascinated by the Pilgrims and Native Americans and how they worked together to get so much work done. In December, our themes will be Healthy Me and Christmas. We will be concentrating on science and math activities during Healthy Me week, and then art and cooking projects will be our primary focus during our Christmas theme. We wish a very Happy Holiday to everyone in the community and Best Wishes for a Happy 2008!
MAP:
In the multiage we are using this holiday time to explore how communities celebrate different holidays and traditions. Students have enjoyed numerous stories about different holiday traditions. Ask your child what his/her favorite story is. Take time to discuss with your child what your family has as a tradition during this season. We have also gotten started on a special sewing project that is putting our fine motor skills to the test! We are looking for volunteers to help us with this project. If you have any time to spare in the afternoons from 2:00 – 2:45, let us know. One holiday tradition that we have in the multiage class is the Night tree. Each year we decorate a tree with edible treats for the animals. We will be making the treats on Tuesday, December 18th at 9:15 – 9:50. We will be hanging them outside, singing songs and enjoying hot cocoa the following day, Wednesday, December 19th at 10:50. If anybody would like to join us for one or both of these events, please do.
2nd Grade:
A new trimester has begun and a new year is approaching! That means different themes in second grade. We have just finished a Nature theme in reading where we had the chance to read both fiction and nonfiction stories. We even set up the classroom so that it was like we were reading around a pond. The new themes are fables and “Around Town, Neighborhood and Community.”
We are also very excited about our new reading buddy Jazzy! For the past several weeks, Jazzy, (a cute, well behaved, and trained therapy dog) has come into our classroom on Wednesday afternoons to read with us. Every student in the class picks a book that they are able to read by themselves, practices reading it, and then reads the story to Jazzy when she gets here.
We read in groups of two, so that our partner can help us if we get stuck. Reading out loud to such a good listener helps us become better readers! After we have read we give Jazzy a treat for being good.
A special thanks to Jayson Casavant, Jazzy’s owner and the RSSU technology integration specialist, for bringing her in every week!
Other topics that we are working on include,
Math: counting money, making change, telling time, addition, subtraction, and reading the temperature.
Science: pebbles, sand, and silt, including learning what geologists do.
Writing: constructed responses (writing a topic sentence and using details to support it), journal writing using words of the month, and Daily Oral Language.
Social Studies: Daily Geography and Cultural Traditions.
Happy Holidays from Grade Two!
3rd /4th Grade:
We would like to welcome a new student to our class. Molly Campagne has joined the fourth grade class. We are very happy to have her here.
We have begun our Vermont Maritime unit. The students have learned that glaciers covered Vermont three million years ago and created the lakes and mountains that we have today. We also learned that Lake Champlain used to have salt water in it. We know that because of the whale fossils that have been found there. We have read about Samuel de Champlain and will be learning about Vermont’s role in the American Revolution. It will be a very interesting unit for all of us.
5th/6th Grade: 5th/6th
This year we will be participating in the Okemo ski and snowboarding program for six weeks on Friday
afternoons beginning in January. We have four options to choose from: downhill skiing, cross country skiing, snowboarding, and snowshoeing. The majority of us are elated about this opportunity.
In science class we are learning about matter. We have been experimenting with compounds, acids, and bases. Each of us also wrote a report on an element and created an advertisement for our selected element.
We’ve been studying ancient Mesopotamia during social studies class. We are currently working on a variety of projects. These include models of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Solomon’s temple, Assyrian weapons, and ziggurats. Other projects are dioramas, diaries, maps, and sculptures. We’re currently writing procedure pieces for our projects and have completed research on our topics that will accompany the projects.
For the last twelve weeks we’ve met with Mrs. Mahar once a week to discuss nutrition and the effects of using drugs. Did you know that approximately four hundred thousand people die each year from smoking? Steroid use can cause heart and liver damage. We all encourage you to have healthy lifestyles.
Happy Holidays!
