Our Lovely Classroom

We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend.  This Mercado was filled with wonderful lessons on teamwork, entrepreneurship, and math.  This week, each student balanced their Mercado work with math and language lessons to support them with their Wax Museum Project as well as a fun statistics project for next week.  We are grateful for those team members who stayed until all cleanup and accounting jobs were done.   This weekend, the children have a practical life/math task  to count, sort and record data relating to the treats they collect for Halloween.  Your child should have these attachments already in their backpacks unless they left before Lunch.  Students only need to complete the first 2 or  3 columns of their data and we will work on the rest in class, unless they want to work ahead.  Children are also welcome to classify any other items they have in larger amounts, such as rocks, baseball cards, shoes, etc.  We will start using the data on Tuesday. If you have any que

Dear Parents, Everyone has been working so hard with their business partners for their Mercado booths tomorrow.  We hope parents bring their friends and family any time from 9-11am to enjoy the various goods and services planned and presented by all our students.  This is one of many experiences designed to be a child-led activity, so we appreciate all you can do to step back and enjoy being served.  We do plan to add some limitations to next Mercado, including a budget so that more financial literacy and problem solving skills are gained from this experience.  We will also be offering shirts for sale for anyone who did not purchase a t-shirt earlier this year. Students may arrive as early as 8am to help set up their supplies early.  We hope everyone can stop by for at least 10 minutes during the 2 hours that their businesses will be open.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact us as soon as possible! Thanks again for all your support!  We look forward to seeing everyon

Dear Parents, Everyone is working so hard on their biography research projects and we have enjoyed reading everyone's information. Most have finished writing their notecards and are working on rough drafts. We are pleased with the progress of those who are new to using cards to record the important facts being researched. Everyone has also grown so much in their writing abilities since the year began.  Our focus this week has been on organizing main ideas and details as well as writing introductory and concluding paragraphs.  After the rough drafts are completed, students will focus on polishing and presenting their work next week.  We know everyone is looking forward to creating their presentation boards next week and presenting their research on Halloween morning to parents and classmates as they visit our " wax   museum ". We appreciate your continued conversations with your child about the work they are doing in class and their chosen topics.  We encourage you t

September 29, 2016 Dear Parents, Over the next few weeks, the upper elementary will be researching important notable men and women in history and will create a living wax museum on Halloween (Monday, 10-31-16).  Students will have time to work on this project in class, and we will research the time period, the lives of each individual, and the historical significance of their life events.  Students will need 3-5 scholarly resources, two of which must be books.   We just returned from the library and the children are so excited to begin their research.  We have emphasized that this is their work and not work for the parents to do for them.  We have broken up this project into manageable steps so that the majority of it will be done in class. Here is a brief overview of how you can support your student during each step of this research project: ❖ Have discussions with your child about their research topic and guide them toward narrowing their focus. ❖ Have ongoing di

I am finally getting caught up on blog posts and I will start with posting previous emails that were sent out.  I want to thank everyone for their support and kind words during the time I was in the hospital and recovering at home. Also, the children wrote cards that lifted my spirits beyond the heartache that I felt. It has been a great comfort to be surrounded by kindness and love during this this difficult transition. Dear Parents, I wanted to thank you all so much for your support during this time of healing and recovery. I am so thankful for each kind word and gift I have received from parents and children.  I have found that being with the children has done so much to lift my spirits and help my body heal faster.  I also am also grateful for the tireless work of  Ms . Cassie and  Ms . Kathy who have done so much for the classroom in my absence. It is wonderful that  Ms . Cassie is able to stay with  Ms . Kathy and I this entire school year as she completes her Upper Ele