Week 11

 Weekly Greetings!

The field trip to Fort Greely to go swimming had to be postponed last week, as a part needed to operate something in the pool was broken. The pool is scheduled to be reopened on November 7th, so I have set the date for Thursday the 10th. Hopefully, there will not be any more problems. I will talk more with you all at Parent/Teacher conferences on the 7th and have permission slips ready that week. After we get through all the Halloween activities this Monday, I will call you all to schedule times for the conferences coming up. We will officially be starting our 2nd quarter this Monday!

October is "Fire Safety Month", and we were fortunate to have a visit from some of our local fire fighters last Tuesday. They went to every class to remind students of the important safety and survival skills needed in case they are faced with a home fire. The students listened intently and had some really good questions.

The next day in the afternoon, the class had another art session with Shauna Lee. How fortunate the school is to have such a talented and trained artist who is willing to volunteer to teach.  After a lesson on using acrylic paints, the class started a new project and began the background.

In Science, we have continued t o explore states of matter. Last week the students used solids and liquid to discover how much air, or gas, was in the objects that allowed them to float. Using a Venn diagram, each group sorted out which object floated, sank, or first floated and later sank.

This will be the last week of the novel unit on Because of Winn-Dixie. Some days, we have read  chapters together or in pairs, and other days they have read independently while I circulate and listen. They have been finding comfortable spots in the class to just curl up and enjoy reading. While reading, the class has been filling out graphic organizers and answering questions to help with the final review.

With Halloween coming, we investigated a pumpkin on Friday. The activity began with the question "What do you know about pumpkins?" Then we went into a moving and visualization activity where they acted out growing from a seed to a pumpkin. Linked together in a vine, they imagined ripening. After I pretended to harvest them all, they rolled over to a good spot for a short read aloud book called The Run Away Pumpkin. We discussed the rhyme and rhythm of the story in addition to some unfamiliar vocabulary words. I shared some fun pumpkin facts, which also tied into aspects of our Science experiments from the day before.  After measuring the circumference,  it was then time to cut open the pumpkin and look over the five parts and seed structure. Once it was opened, the class pulled the seeds out, cleaned them, and counted how many. We found a total of 235 seeds in our pumpkin. The final step was to toast the seeds for our class party on Monday. We will also make a Jack-o-Lantern that day as a group activity for Halloween.

I will have more pictures next week from the Halloween activities that will start our week off.

NO HOMEWORK ON HALLOWEEN!

Enjoy your week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown