Newsletter Sept. 15-19

Peregrine Press

September 15-19

Important Dates:

Monday: Running Club in the morning (bring a water bottle and tennis shoes)

Tuesday: In and About

Wednesday: P.E. (bring a water bottle and tennis shoes)

Thursday: Mobile Museum Presentation on the Atfalati Native Americans

Friday: Picture Day

I would like to say that this first week of school was beautiful! I could easily think of a hundred things that were my favorite, but I would like to highlight two particular high points for me. One was when we were singing songs together. In particular I loved the enthusiasm of the class when we were learning the 13 Original Colonies song. The second major highlight of the week was Friday afternoon when we had Appreciation Day. Students were selected randomly to say something that they appreciated about a classmate. The students receiving the praise were blushing!

We have already begun our study of the colonial times. Each student chose a new colonial “character” out of a hat. They will be developing this character as they learn about what life was really like during the colonial times. This week the focus will be on the geography of the 13 colonies. The students will also continue their journal entries as they continue researching their new colonial characters.

We will also begin our Running Club at Central School where students will run/walk for 20 minutes and count their laps. When we return to school we will compile our data and find the mean, median, mode and range. There is an “totally awesome” rap titled “The Triple M R Rap” that helps teach what these things are. (As you can probably tell, we sing a lot of songs in this class!) I really like the way that running and math are integrated and it is really neat for the students to see that over time they are able to run more laps, or at least feel better when they are running, and they also really get used to data collection.

Lunch Suggestion

The students all know that they are welcome to use the microwave in the classroom, however, a very large line has formed every day this week which resulted in some students waiting more than 10 minutes to eat their lunch. Because our lunch time is only 20-25 minutes, that is a lot of time wasted in line. I would like to recommend that students don’t bring things to heat up EVERYDAY but maybe just once or twice a week. I would also like to have Fridays be a “no microwave day.” We will have two snack times on Fridays but I would encourage a simple sandwich or granola bar, yogurt etc. instead of things that require heating. If this is going to pose a problem please let me know. I would just rather see students sitting at the tables eating and socializing together, not waiting in line, boredJ.

Some upcoming events:

We will be going to Abundant Harvest CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) at the Dos Sequoias Farm on September 23^rd. This will be to learn about how our food grows, and what our local and seasonal foods are as well. We would love to have 2 or 3 volunteers join us, so please email me if you are interested.

The class and I would also like to host a Colonial Tea Party with costumes to celebrate the unit coming to a close. We would like to do it October 3rd. Please let me know if you have tea cups and or costumes that could help create the right mood for the event.