Peregrine Press
December 8-12
Schedule:
Monday: Running Club
Tuesday: Out and About to Ash Street Field for an Art connection
Wednesday: P.E.
Thursday: Art
Last Week:
Thank you so much for coming to the Celebrations of Learning! There was a great turn out and I have to say that the hot chocolate and cocoa made the night perfect. I loved watching the students and families interacting in a social setting where everyone was so happy. That night really showed me just how great our community is! I love being a part of it all.
We kicked off our consumerism unit with a study of potato chips. The students learned about how long it takes, and how many different materials are required to create a bag of potato chips. This process includes "inputs" and "outputs" that your children should be able to explain to you. We then visited Waste Management where we were able to see how much waste Forest Grove creates. We learned that 20 loads of semi-trucks take waste to the landfill in McMinnville every day, just from the Forest Grove site. The trucks can't weigh more than 92,000 pounds (including the weight of the truck itself). That is so much waste! I think one of the most favorite parts of the Out and About was when we all got on the giant scale and found that we weigh over 2,000 pounds as a class. On the way back to school we picked up litter off of the sidewalks to try and help clean up our town.
On Wednesday we watched the video title "The Story of Stuff" that I encourage you all to watch. You can google it and watch it on your computer. This showed the students the process all goods go through from extraction to production to waste, with a few other steps in between. This helped the students to see that we consume in a linear cycle that is polluting our earth and is not sustainable. Thursday the students were assigned a group and a task with very little direction from me that was to simulate the steps in creating any "good or product". They could earn reward tokens or penalty tokens depending on the actions they took. (Those actions either polluted the environment or helped conserve materials.) This was not only a great activity for the kids to see how every single thing that they do effects someone or something, this was also a great teambuilding activity. I saw students working really well together to accomplish the task.
At Running Club I was really impressed with how many more kids were running. They also are demonstrating a higher level of success and independence with working on mean, median, mode and range.
We started literacy circles this week as well. I know many of the students are not really excited about the books they are reading, but I am hoping they will get past that because literacy circles are a great opportunity for students to improve their reading fluency, vocabulary development and comprehension. It is also a great opportunity for students to be leaders and learn to compromise.
***On Thursday every student should have brought home a list of things that the soldiers would appreciate in their care packages. I encourage you if you can, to provide even just one thing off of the list. My goal is to have those done by this Friday so that they can be sent off in time to arrive before Christmas.
This Week:
We will continue or study of consumerism with a focus on how "green" our clothes are. In order to do a really cool activity though I need a soil sample from everyone and the soil needs to be dried out. I sent home homework last week for everyone that explained this, but only 2 students bought back the soil. Please send in a snack bag of soil as soon as possible.
We are going to start writing letters and Christmas cards to kids in the hospital to hopefully bring some cheer to their holidays. Literacy circles will continue as well. Towards the end of the week my goal is to start a writing activity where the students will get to use their imaginations to write reindeer tales. Last year we wrote Turkey Tales about how a turkey may or may not have escaped Thanksgiving Dinner and the students really seemed to enjoy that.
***Outdoor School money reminder: The payments are due on the 5th of each month so if you have not paid for December please get that to Donna in the office ASAP. Thanks!
Upcoming Events
Monday December 15th: Buddy Lunch and All School Meeting
Thursday December 18th: Out and About to Goodwill
Friday December 19th: Holiday Celebration (I would like to show a Christmas movie as part of the fun. If you object to a PG movie please let me know so that I can make an appropriate decision about the movie. I would also like to do hot chocolate and candy canes if anyone would like to donate either of those items. I encourage people to bring a mug so that we don't have to waste any paper cups.)
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