Week of October 29, 2012

Dear Parents: 

It has been a difficult couple of weeks, especially last week. I appreciate so much your caring, understanding, and prayers for Mrs. Weinman and her family. It is so hard and incredibly sad to lose a friend and colleague, someone you see every day. She definitely touched many lives in so many ways. Thank you for understanding the need to close school on Monday so that her friends and colleagues are able to be together to say good-bye. 

One of Mrs. Weinman's favorite days was the Halloween Parade and Fall Festival which will take place Wednesday. The parade begins at 8:30. Please send your child to school in his or her costume. The children may wear play clothes to the festival so please send some for your child to change into after the parade. Don't forget shoes and underwear! If you are accompanying your child to the festival, please be at the classroom no later than 9:45 to pick up your child. There will be a sign-out sheet at our classroom. Please be sure to sign your child out. You will not have to do so at the office. If someone else will be picking your child up, please send a note or email to let me know. Otherwise, they will be dismissed to the festival at 9:45.

Math: This week I hope to finish unit 3. We'll be counting and exchanging dimes, nickels, and pennies and learning to write money amounts using dollar and cents notation. We'll explore domino-dot patterns and practice all of the basic addition facts through domino addition. The plan is to take the unit 3 assessment next Monday.

Science: We will finish up our study of the human body this week. We'll learn about the largest organ of our body - our skin. We'll also spend some time reviewing all that we have learned about the amazing human body. Their "pocket" books will be coming home either the end of this week or early next week. Please celebrate with your child all that we have learned and all of their hard work! It has been such a fun unit!

Reading Workshop: We are noticing how quotation marks capture talk and help us to know who is talking. We are learning to change our voice when we see different types of punctuation, such as questions, exclamations, ellipses, etc. Paying attention to punctuation helps us to make meaning of what we are reading and to read books and poems as the author intended.

Word Work: We continue working on words with short vowel /e/. This week we are focusing on the word families _eg, _est, and _ell. We’ll continue to work with 2 and 3 letter initial blends and digraphs.

Writing Workshop: We will continue with our poetry unit. Look for a sampling of your child's poetry to be displayed in the breezeway at Poetry in the Park.

Don't forget that we are collecting needed items for the animals at the SPCA for our first grade service-learning project. We will take all of the donations to the SPCA on Wednesday, November 14. We'll leave school at 10:45 and should return by 2:00. We will be eating a picnic lunch at the SPCA so please be sure to send a completely disposable lunch with your child that day. If you have purchased a school lunch for that day, Sage will provide a bag lunch for your child. Parents are welcome to accompany us to the SPCA but will need to drive separately. We will not have room on the bus.


Also, please remember that our class will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 15 at 1:45. The other classes will celebrate on Friday, but because we have two birthdays to celebrate on Friday, I have moved our Thanksgiving celebration to Thursday.

Other Things to Remember:

• The Book Fair will take place next week! Our class will be browsing on Tuesday morning at 10:05. If you would like to come shop with your child, you can do so before or after school, before 8:25, or during recess (1:00 - 1:30) each day.
• Poetry in the Park will be on Thursday, November 8^th at 8:30 a.m. Our class will recite the poem, "The Creature in the Classroom" by Jack Prelutsky. Please keep working with your child on this poem at home using lots of expression in both voice and face! 
• Next Friday, November 9th, is a Professional Development Day for teachers. There will be no school for students. 
• Field trip to the SPCA will be Wednesday, November 14.
• The Holiday Gift Drive begins December 3^rd and ends December 14^th.

Volunteers this week:

• Wednesday - No check-out this week
• Thursday - Math Game (10:30) - Deborah Shipley
• Friday - Art  (9:15) - Mary Hind
• Friday - Parent Reader - (2:15) - Charlene Hosseini

Take care - 
Susan