February 11th-15th

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Homework packets are due tomorrow!  Please remember to send them back to school in your child's boomerang folder.

Valentine's Day is on Thursday!  If your child would like to bring in valentines for their friends, please remember to bring a valentine for everyone on Team Blowey.  We have 19 students.  Your child will bring home a class list so that they will have the names of each of their teammates. 

To go along with Valentine's Day and the idea of friendship, we will be creating a friendship snack mix!  Each student is asked to bring a cup and a half of their favorite snack (possibilities include, chex cereal, goldfish crackers, chocolate chips, golden grahams, sunflower seeds, raisins, etc) in a ziploc baggie.  We'll be adding each student's ingredient one at a time and the students will realize that when everyone pitches in their ingredient, the mix gets better and better... just like friendships!   Your child will bring home a paper note with more ideas for snack foods with them today.  Also, if anyone can donate cups and napkins it would be greatly appreciated!

The Winter Carnival will be this Thursday, February 14th from 1-1:45!  We'll be able to burn off all of our valentine excitement by building snow sculptures, throwing snowballs at targets, and sledding!  If you have a sled that you would like to send in for us to use for the day, please bring it to school and do not send it on the bus!  We're also hoping for parents to donate some hot cocoa and cookies to help students enjoy this festive day!  We'll also need some parent volunteers to help out!  If you can donate any supplies or some of your time to help us with this event, please let me know!  Thank you!  (If the weather doesn't allow for Thursday, we'll have the carnival on Friday at the same time)

Next week is February Break!  Instead of normal homework packets, students will be getting a special vacation homework packet that I have created.  If you have any questions after receiving the homework packet, please let me know!

 Valentine's Day mailboxes:  I have heard that several students have already created their very own mailbox at home for valentines and would like to bring them to school.  They are more than welcome to bring them to school with them on Thursday.  For those of you who have not created anything at home, no need to worry!  I have scheduled some time for students to create their very own mailbox of sorts here at school.

This week in...

Language Arts:  With so much excitement going on this week, our schedule will look a little different than normal.  Our phonics/spelling words for the week will be homonyms from our priority list.  Homonyms are the words that sound the same but have different meanings.  For example, write and right or to and two.  Here are the words we will be working with:  right, write, no, know, their, there, to, two, too, wood, and would.  

For writing, we will be finishing our final drafts of our persuasive letters.  We'll be using our writer's eyes to make sure our letters are convincing, they have capital letters where they belong, they are organized, they have correct punctuation, and that most of our words are spelled correctly.  Our goal is to finish up the last part of the writing process by the end of the week!

Book Buddies:  We will be meeting with our Kindergarten book buddies this week!  It's such a great time to build connections and enhance our reading skills!

Math:  We will be continuing to work on money.  Students have already unpacked the standard, but will now take a pre-test to see where they will start.  From there, we'll practice menu choices to help us meet our goals.

We'll also be trying to finish up our Pennies for Peace projects.  If you haven't already checked out the organization, here is the website:  www.penniesforpeace.org.   Learn more about the origin of our project that blends money standards and place value standards!

Social Studies:  Since the 100th day of school will fall on Valentine's day, students were challenged today to create 100 valentines to deliver to some elderly folks who are living in an assisted living facility.  Just this weekend, I attended a chocolate festival at an assisted living center in Portland and I will deliver the valentines to that facility.  We thought it was a great way to connect our 100th of school, Valentine's day, the idea of friendship and giving, and also to connect to the community.  Making 100 valentines was a simple way for us to give back to someone else and let them know that they are special.

So far our flat kids have visited:  Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and even Germany!  We're still waiting on a couple friends to return to Russell School.  If you know of someone who still has one of our flat kids, please remind them to send their letters and the flat kids back as soon as possible!  Thank you!

100th day of school activities:  Our 100 valentines were not the only thing we'll be doing to celebrate.  Team Blowey will also be writing about what they think life will be like in 100 years.  They'll also have the chance to color in a hundreds chart and use the pieces to create a picture.  

If there is anything that I have forgotten to put on the blog, please let me know!  Also, do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!

I hope everyone is enjoying all of the SNOW!! Have a wonderful week!