Week 17

 Weekly Greetings,

Thank you to all of you that helped and donated food for the movie night fundraiser last Friday night. We made $388.00! I have a couple more movies coming in the mail, and we still have concession food left over, so hopefully we can do another movie night again soon.

This week we will be having an enrichment week with books and activities surrounding the holiday season. There will be homework as usual, but no spelling list this week. The most important event will be the Christmas Concert at 2:00pm on Thursday. Please try to be there, as the students have been working hard on the songs that they will be singing. The last day of school before Christmas vacation will be this Friday. We will be having a class party starting at 12:30pm and I will attach a snack sign up list with this week's parent letter.

As for some highlights from last week, we started the week off on Monday with the bi-weekly visit from the school councilor. The students are being encouraged to explore careers, and work hard academically.

The class has also made a Christmas wall with the 3rd grade, and we needed numerous hand prints for a tree decoration. Everyone traced and cut enough hand prints for a good-sized tree and then colored some decorations to go on it.

There was a special presentation sponsored by the Tetlin Refuge on Wednesday, and the class got to meet master snowshoe maker, George Albert. He did a nice job of showing the students the tradition way of making snowshoes from birch trees.

In Science, observations were recorded about the aquatic organisms in our classroom. As a class, we then compared and contrasted the snails and Guppies viewed in the containers.

Friday, everyone went to the greenhouse to see what was growing during the winter months. The class saw the barley growing in the dirt beds that will be tilled in for organic fertilizer before planting new food crops this spring. Then they made decorations out of natural materials that will come home later this week.

They also got to have a special snack before we returned to our class to finish the day.

This will be the last post of 2016. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. Class will resume again on Tuesday, January 3, 2017.

Wishing you a warm and healthy vacation break.

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown

Week 16

Weekly Greetings!

As I mentioned last week, Tim Lorenzini from the Tetlin Refuge was in on Monday to help get the class focused on a contribution to the Migratory Bird calendar for 2018. After the students returned from PE, and the wonderful time practicing NYO techniques that day, they were ready to research the bird each had chosen to study. For those that had been struggling with picking a bird, Tim had numerous books to look at and he was able to help everyone find a bird that interested them. Using the internet, the students read and took notes on characteristics and habitat, in addition to listening to the bird's song. This week, they will finish a literature contribution, and start a picture in Art on Wednesday.

Last week in Science, we started seriously looking at the role of living organisms in the balance of recycling nature. Students worked in pairs to observe and describe Pill Bugs on one day, then Millipedes on another day.

They seemed to enjoy the Millipedes more, as they were far more active.

This week, the class will observe aquatic organisms and compare the snails and fish we have in our room.

Please remember that we have a fundraiser movie night planned on Friday and I will send home a final flyer later this week.

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown