Winter Solstice

Hello families,

We spent the past week learning about how the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun at this time of year which makes longer nights and shorter days. With the beginning of Winter we will await the return of the sun as more and more sunlight is added to our days until the Summer Solstice. We also learned about Winter Solstice traditions all over the globe from thousands of years ago til today.

Winter Solstice is usually around December 21st so we were pretty close with our wonderful Winter Solstice celebration today. We sang our Winter Solstice song, lit candles to remind us that the sun and light will return, and made wishes to honor the tradition of hoping for good and happy things to come our way.

I was amazed that everyone kept their Secret Snowflake really secret until we exchanged gifts! It was amazing. We also enjoyed delicious Solstice Snacks. Thanks to everyone for contributing to make this a special celebration. Here are a few photos taken during our Solstice song & candle lighting ceremony.

    

    
      

 

I wish you all a happy, healthy, and safe holiday break. See you Tuesday January 5th when school resumes in the new year!

Best Wishes,
Theresa

Highlights on 12-18-15

December 18, 2015

Hello families!


What a wonderful week we spent together. It amazes me how hardworking these students are, even with the excitement of the holidays looming and enveloping us all.

Students have been busily publishing their holiday painted essays and working on their best handwriting—focusing on size and formation of lowercase letters. We finished reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Farm with Sarah before she left. We also read a few stories about Kwanzaa and Christmas traditions this week.


Tuesday was Sarah’s last official day of student teaching with us. We had a special closing circle to share our wishes for Sarah and her future in teaching wherever she goes. We also had great news—she’ll be with us for a few of our Winter Wellness Fridays in January! Sarah surprised the class with copies of her favorite childhood audiobook, Newberry: The Life and Times of a Maine Clam.


Second grade mathematicians worked more with open number line strategies for subtraction. They also got the basics of telling time on the hour and half hour on digital and analog clocks. We’ll continue this work this month and next with the goal of reading clocks with 5 minute increments this school year.


We’ve begun talking more about Winter Solstice and the science behind it this week. Next week we’ll study the history and legends of Winter Solstice in social studies. We’ll have our Solstice Celebration on Wednesday. Please note I did change the start time to 12:30 to make sure we have time for everything before our Guidance class at the end of the day. It’s a really special celebration and I would hate to rush things and miss out on this important classroom community event. Please remember to send your child’s gift exchange gift in next week labeled with your child’s name (i.e. From: Theresa). It stays a secret until the moment the gift is exchanged!


That's the news for now. Thanks for checking the blog--I really appreciate when you read our weekly news and announcements!

Dates to Remember:

Wednesday December 23 – School Spirit Day: Comfy clothes/PJs and bring a small stuffie to school day!

Wednesday December 23 - Winter Solstice Celebration 12:30 - 2:15 pm

Thursday Dec. 24 - Monday Jan. 4 -- Holiday Break, NO SCHOOL

Tuesday January 5, 2016 -- 1st school day in the new year!

HOW 12-11-15

Happy Friday!

This week we continued with our integrated social studies and writing unit on families and family traditions at home and around the world. Each of the children worked on writing the ‘Parts Of’ a holiday they know well, thinking about all of the traditions associated with this holiday. We also continued working on our ‘Painted Essay’ from the survey of family holidays and traditions that went home. We discussed how to write an introduction with a focus statement, how to organize the main points of our paper, and how to write a conclusion. Below are some photos from some of our lessons together about this writing process. They are now entering the editing process and will be able to start working on their final draft sometime next week!

    

In 2nd grade math we have moved into practicing subtraction with our doubles, near doubles, and two apart double the middle fact families. We will keep practicing with these same fact families with subtraction more next week. We have also been working on learning how to use a number line to help us with subtraction, finding the difference between two numbers. We will have more opportunities to work with this strategy next week. We will also start to work on telling time with analog clocks.

During read aloud this week we continued reading in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm, discussing the character traits and making predictions. We also had some opportunities to read stories about some different holidays and traditions from different cultures. You should see an article come home that focused on the different parts of holidays using examples from many different holidays. We had a chance to read this article yesterday and the children really enjoyed it.

Here are a few pictures from our 4 Winds lesson with Honi and Abby about conifers and cones!

We are all looking forward to our Winter Solstice party and secret snowflake! Thank you to everyone who sent in forms about secret snowflake. We are still waiting to hear back from a few of you so please check to see if you have those at home. If you could send them in some time early next week that would be great!


One quick reminder to please send your children with appropriate gear for recess. We are approaching winter, though it doesn’t feel much like it today, so please start sending hats, gloves, warm coats, boots, etc. Boots are especially important right now because with this warmer weather there is also a lot of mud outside. Consequently, clean indoor shoes are equally important! Please send indoor shoes with your child each day or if you have an extra pair of shoes they can stay at school all week!


Thank you again for having such amazing children, we had another wonderful week together!


Important Dates to Remember:
Thursday December 17 - All School Meeting 2:30-3:15 pm
Wednesday December 23 - Winter Solstice Celebration 1 - 2:20 pm
Thursday Dec. 24 - Monday Jan. 4 -- Holiday Break, NO SCHOOL
Tuesday January 5, 2016 -- 1st school day in the  new year!

Have a great weekend
~Sarah and Theresa

Winter Concert Song Lyrics

12-9-15

Hello all,

Today Ms. Krikorian (Ms. K) announced the winter concert songs to our class. The concert will be Thursday January 28th at 6:30 pm. Please let her know (call her at school or email her directly) if there is an extenuating circumstance that will no allow your child to be there. She told the class that attendance is mandatory and reminded them that performance is part of their work and grade in music class.


Here are the lyrics to the 2 songs both 1-2 classes will sing in case your child wants to practice them at home.


Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Here’s a little song I wrote.

You might want to sing it note for note.

Don’t worry, be happy.


In every life we have some trouble,

But when you worry you make it double.

Don’t worry, be happy

(Don’t worry, be happy now)



Doo, doo, doo ------- (2x)



Ain’t got no cash, ain’t got no style.

Ain’t got no gal to make you smile.

Don’t worry, be happy.



When you worry your face will frown.

And that will bring everybody down.

Don’t worry, be happy.

(Don’t worry, be happy now.)



Doo, doo, doo ------- (4x)



Don’t worry, be happy!



Words and music by Bobby McFerrin

Arranged by Roger Emerson



You Are My Sunshine


You are my sunshine,

My only sunshine.

You make me happy

When skies are gray.

You’ll never know, dear

How much I love you.

Please don’t take my sunshine away.



I'll always love you


And make you happy,


And no one else can come between.


Now we will always

Be together.

You're the sunshine of my dreams.

Highlights from Sarah's 1st Leadership Week

Dear Families,

First, I want to start by saying that I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to get to know all of your amazing children. They are so kind and caring each and every day. It is such a wonderful community to be a part of!


This week we started an integrated social studies and writing unit on families and family traditions at home and around the world. Each of the children worked on writing ‘How-To’ instructions about a food tradition that was important to them. We also learned about the different parts of nonfiction writing in the form of a ‘Painted Essay’ and are now starting the process of writing our own painted essays from the survey of family holidays and traditions that went home before thanksgiving break.

In 2nd grade math we started the week reviewing our doubles, near doubles, and two apart double the middle addition facts. They had their first fact fluency quiz on Wednesday and they absolutely rocked it after just two days of reviewing! We will practice these same fact families more next week transitioning away from addition and into subtraction. In addition to reviewing these fact families we have also been working more on 2- and 3-digit number strings, practicing organizing and showing our math thinking when adding more than 2 numbers together at a time. We will keep working more on this next week.

1st grade mathematicians have been continuing their work with make-10 addition facts and using number lines to help with adding.


During read aloud this week we began reading The Fraidy-Cat Cure in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm, discussing the character traits of some of the new characters introduced in this chapter (Phoebe & her family members). We have also been making some predictions about how Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle might cure Phoebe of her many fears. We also had a chance to read The Greedy Python, looking for juicy words to help expand our vocabulary, and practicing retelling the story afterwards to build comprehension.

This Friday Mrs. Fox talked to the children about the upcoming Winter Solstice party and the Secret Snowflake tradition. Please keep an eye out for letters with information about these events coming home.

This has been a great first week and I am so looking forward to next week!

Have a great weekend!

~Sarah