Jan 3rd & 4th

Happy New Year friends!

We hope your winter vacation and holiday was restful! This is just a reminder that we will come back to school Thursday January 3rd. Since this is a shortened week (two days) we will not resume spelling words again until next week, Jan 7-11. Please be on the lookout for the words in next week’s blog.

April and I want to say thank you to everyone for the lovely send off before winter break, we had all kinds of lovely things, treats, handmade cards from everyone before we went to break. We very much appreciate the show of love and support from you guys!

Another huge thanks to the families that volunteered, donated or helped out in some other way for the class party before break. It was a huge success and the kids had such a great time. Thank you again for being a part of this with us!

As we move into the new year, here are some things to be aware of.

I (Ms. Taylor) am continuing on with the class through the next few weeks, as soon as that changes I will let you know so that we can move the students into the final transition with their new permanent teacher together.

Aside from Ms. Rosie’s amazing job helping us deep clean the kitchen, we deep cleaned the room on Friday and will continue to do so every Friday at the end of the day. During winter vacation the carpets were cleaned and the floors were waxed so our room will be the cleanest it’s been since school started! I don’t know about you guys but I’m excited to go back to a clean space! Yay!

I wanted to mention, for those of you that are not aware, we have a severe nut allergy in our classroom and are trying to encourage our students to wash their hands before coming into the room. Please help us by having children wash hands at home after they pack lunches. Unfortunately even having contact with a surface that another student has touched could be hazardous for our allergic student. We thank you for your help with this matter. We will be checking everyone every morning when they arrive to help keep everyone in the room safe. Side bar, this should also help cut back on the spread of germs!

All water bottles and lunch boxes went home Friday as well, we are trying to keep those going home for regular washing/sanitizing. Please make sure to check your child’s backpack and wash these bottles before they are returned to school. Thanks!

The deadline for the home projects is creeping up! Friday January 18th all student projects will be due for our S.T.E.M. fair. More information can be found in the first blog post titled ‘Home Projects.’ If you need more information please let me know. I am trying to get something ready to send home with information on it as well. Please do not bring projects in until the week of Jan 14-18.

We look forward to seeing all the students later this week as we start 2019! Have a safe and Happy New Year everyone! See you soon!

 

December 17th-21st

Hello families,

We have a lot of great things happening this week that we want you to be a part of!

Monday kicks off the week with MMA’s winter concert at 6:30pm in the new gym. We attended a practice on Friday and everyone sounds great, we hope to see you and your child there.

We will be doing our class holidays around the world party on Thursday December 20th. We are looking for supplies to be donated as well as parent volunteers. Below are the times/supplies:

Volunteer times:

-Thur Dec 20th 11am-12pm-to help with gingerbread house decorating/ making clay ornaments

-Thur Dec 20th 12:30pm-2:00pm-to help out with crafts and clean up

Supplies:

-3 bags of flour, 3 containers of salt, liquid food coloring, pre-assembled graham cracker houses (talk to April or Taylor for specifics but enough for 25 students), candy to decorate houses, 25 gallon sized zip top bags, 25 paper plates,

Thank you in advance for all of your help with these things! We also want to thank Grant’s mom Rosie for coming in and helping us get organized last week! We so appreciate you parents and your helping hands!

We will also be collecting gently used stuffed animals for nearby shelters, those can be brought in Monday-Thursday.

On Friday we will be having a read-a-thon during the last part of our morning work cycle! If your child has a book they wish to share feel free to send it that day.

Below are the spelling words for the week:

Apples: cat, comb, hat, cake, chin, chick, coat, hook, chop, heart,

Oranges: nap, rag, tag, wag, map, cap, bag, lap, flag,

Bananas: screen, spray, string, spring, stream, stripe, strut, spread, strange, scream,

Limes: lost, goat, love, load, foam, toast, whole, boat, drove, knock

Blueberries: good, fool, root, hook, hood, tool, float, brook, wool, stood,

Watermelons: total, novel, vowel, special, cancel, couple, pencil, jewel, metal, fragile,

Plums: afterward, forearm, predate, afternoon, preseason, postseason, preposition, postwar, preoccupied, foreword,

Upcoming Events

12/17 – Winter Concert

12/18 – Redwoods Parent Meeting, 5:30pm

12/21 – Last Day of class before winter break

1/3/19 – First Day of class after winter break

1/4/19 – MAPA Meeting, 8:45am, Conference Room

1/10/19 – End of 2nd Quarter

1/11/19 – School closed for Students, All day professional learning

1/14/19 – STEM Week begins

 

December 10th-14th

If you are new to the blog, welcome! Ms. April and Ms. Taylor are glad to have you here. This will be the permanent blog for the remainder of this school year.

In language we started spelling words this week! We will work on these daily and test every Friday. Feel free to work on them at home as well. Below are the words for each group:

Apples:
saw, socks, sun, hand, ham, hose, ship, sheep, shoe, shop
Oranges:
fan, dad, pan, sad, man, pad, van, mad, can
Bananas:
wrong, wreck, knot, wrap, gnaw, known, kneel, knee, wrist, knife,
Limes:
space, rain, pain, paint, rash, want, camp, said, chain, frame,
Blueberries:
point, join, boy, noise, soy, spoil, foil, coin, toy, oil,
Watermelon:
title, little, simple, paddle, apple, bottle, battle, cable, middle, bugle,
Plums:
distrust, unread, disease, unattached, reinstall, mislead, misplace, disorder, unheated, misfortune,

Our journey through inventors and scientists continue as we spot light Galileo Galilee this week and his amazing discoveries in astronomy, measurement and of course the heliocentric theory. We did some writing on him today and will continue working on these writing samples throughout the week. Most of our class turned in their writing, and the ones that did not will finish tomorrow or it will be sent home as at home work due by Friday.

I do not believe in sending work home, but if it becomes necessary for whatever reason I will be in contact with you individually so we can work together to get assignments finished at home if they cannot be completed during class time. There should never be any reason for this to happen, unless classroom time is not being utilized as it should be.

We will be revisiting our floating rock experiment for phase two later this week where we will alter some of the variables of our class experiment to make the rocks float instead of sink. We look forward to using this as a demonstration of the scientific method. We will also be tying in our laws of motion during the experiment as well.

In our cultural lessons we are working on holidays around the world and will culminate with a celebration of all the continents in one day on Thursday December 20th. We will have more details about this in our next post as well as how you can help out/volunteer.

This week our grace and courtesy is on making a proper apology, and staying on task.

We are still having trouble with many students not arriving on time for class in the morning. The doors open at 8:15am and the bell rings at 8:30am. Please make sure that students are on time.

If you missed it from last week here is the information on home projects due in January for our class:

For the STEM Fair home project, we will ask that your child create a science presentation based on Utah state science standards they’ve been studying in class.  We want to treat our STEM Fair not as a general “Science Fair,” but rather a celebration of science. (Kind of like we did with our cultural festival last month.)

A science celebration presentation is not limited to just a tri-board.  Listed below are ideas your child can choose from (but are not limited to) for the STEM Fair.

Some ideas include, but are not limited to:

  • Poster or tri-fold board
  • Brochure
  • Hands-on experiment with write-up
  • Experiment demonstration by student (must be able to show over and over)
  • Create a board game
  • Video (Example: Make their own Bill Nye)
  • Performance or skit
  • Diorama
  • Create a book
  • Create a lesson or work

Below is a list of each grade’s guidelines:

1st grade-will research and present on a scientist/inventor

2nd grade-will do a project using the scientific method

3rd grade-will present on simple machines or laws of motion

 

Welcome/ Home Projects

Hello everyone and welcome to the new blog for Ms. Jill’s former class/Ms. April’s class. We are glad to have you here!

We (Ms. April & Ms. Taylor) want to thank you for your patience and support while we get situated and gear up for an amazing month full of learning opportunities!

Our field trip to The Hill Aerospace Museum Tuesday was amazing and it was great to get to spend some time with our class families! Thank you to everyone that drove, volunteered and transported students. We learned a lot about the laws of motion as well as inventors which is a perfect precursor to our next unit on STEM activities!

HOME PROJECTS:

For the STEM Fair home project, we will ask that your child create a science presentation based on Utah state science standards they’ve been studying in class.  We want to treat our STEM Fair not as a general “Science Fair,” but rather a celebration of science. (Kind of like we did with our cultural festival last month.)

A science celebration presentation is not limited to just a tri-board.  Listed below are ideas your child can choose from (but are not limited to) for the STEM Fair.

Some ideas include, but are not limited to:

  • Poster or tri-fold board
  • Brochure
  • Hands-on experiment with write-up
  • Experiment demonstration by student (must be able to show over and over)
  • Create a board game
  • Video (Example: Make their own Bill Nye)
  • Performance or skit
  • Diorama
  • Create a book
  • Create a lesson or work

Below is a list of each grade’s guidelines:

1st grade-will research and present on a scientist/inventor

2nd grade-will do a project using the scientific method

3rd grade-will present on simple machines or laws of motion

To help support this at home and get our students excited for this, we will be spot lighting a new scientist/inventor every week as well trying some in class experiments to brush up on the scientific method. This week we highlighted Nicola Tesla and had a great discussion about his discoveries and unyielding curiosity. We will also do a class project demonstrating the scientific method with rocks Thursday morning.

Aside from our STEM unit we are also going to be working on a cultural holidays around the world and have a culminating event before winter break in class for our students. More details to follow on this later!

The only other thing that we wanted to mention, is to ask that your child be on time to school. Most of our discussions/experiments/etc happen in the early morning before they start their morning work cycle. Students that arrive later not only cause disruption to crucial class time, but also miss out on these great activities.

Calendar of upcoming events:

Fri Dec 7th MAPA (PTA) meeting 8:45am

Mon Dec 10th Early release day (students dismissed from school  at 1pm)

Mon Dec 17th Winter Concert 6:30pm (flyers coming home this week)

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with April or myself if you have any questions comments and concerns! Thanks again everyone!

April: astoddart@mariamontessoriacademy.org

Taylor: tmonsen@mariamontessoriacademy.org