Highlights of the Week 9-9-16

Hello families,

We've had another fantastic week together! We explored the many, many book bins in our classroom library. We read to ourselves and with friends. We began to use the acronym I PICK to help us think about the books we read:

I choose a book

Purpose
Interest
Comprehend
Know most words

We brainstormed a HUGE list of rules for our classroom learning community. We then synthesized the rules with commonalities into a much shorter list. Here are the rules our class wants to use to help us be good learners and friends this year:

• Have fun and include people.
• Be kind.
• Be safe, have personal space.
• Do Rumney CARES.

We also began brainstorming and writing our Hopes and Dreams for ourselves this year. We all have things we want to learn or improve this year and chose at at least one personal goal and social goal. Next week we'll finish by writing an academic goal for ourselves. We read 3 books that also link nicely with this theme: Drawing Lessons from a Bear, Leo the Late Bloomer, and It's Okay to be Different. Just for fun, we also read Skippyjon Jones: Class Action, and the book (based on the song) What Does the Fox Say?

This week we had lots of activity and learned about many ways we can move our bodies to help ourselves learn and stay engaged. On Tuesday we made listening tools--ask your child how they did this or what they put inside of their own listening tool. Some students also brought in their gum contracts were able to use gum as an engagement tool. Our system is to get a piece of gum twice a day: after snack and after lunch. If you give your child permission to chew gum a convenient place to keep it may be in the lunch box! Make sure to send back the gum chewing permission form if you'd like your child to be able to do this!

We also began our yearlong study of daylight and the relationship between the sun and Earth through the seasons. Along with our science curriculum we also have an amazing parent volunteer science program, 4 Winds. So far I have 2 parent volunteers for this monthly commitment (thanks Karen & Abby)! Our 4 Winds classes will be one Thursday a month from 1:30-2:40. If anyone else wants to help out with 4 Winds during this time please let me know!

I also added a new tab at the top of the blog with the current month's sharing calendar. A few of the kids have told me they lost their calendar at home so I thought I'd also post it here in case you need to check it out! The formatting is a little off but I wanted to get it up quickly. Thanks for understanding!

Have a great weekend!


Dates to Remember:
Wednesday September 21 - Open House 6:30-7:30
Friday September 30 - All School Hike
Friday October 7 - Teacher Inservice - No School for Kids