Week of December 10-17, 2008

Hello Students and Parents of the Rainforest Room,
This blog will update you on:
1) current and upcoming events
2) standards covered
3) highlights of the past week.

Enjoy!

Current and Upcoming Events:

• Tomorrow, Thursday, December 11, 2008 we will be viewing the Kroc Cener's version of Guys and Dolls. They have asked each child to pay $5 to cover their costs. Please send this money with your child.
• Every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday we have swimming P.E. The kids needs swimming suits and towels, and something warm to change into is always nice.
• We are making gingerbread housese next Tuesday with Drisana. Please send small, lightweight candies with your child to make this possible.
• On Wednesday of next week, we will be ice skating again and then having a brief holiday party and bake sale. Be there, ready to buy baked goods!
• On Thursday of next week, we will be walking through the upper grades home made wax museum.
• We've started a new partnership on Fridays: Legos and Creative movement.

Standards Covered:

Highlights of the past week:

• We've started a penpal with Roekmini's sister's class in San Jose, Costa Rica. Each child has received a penpal and has met them over skype. We will start writing letters and then typing them in through e-mail. Ask your child about their conversations with their penpals!
• We've read Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus. It's about a young tiger who's father desperately wants him to start writing, reading, drawing, and eating neatly. Yet, Leo has a hard time blooming when his father is watching him so intently. We tracked the put ups and the put downs. We also did a book report on this book as a class.
• We've been learning how to pick a just right book.
• There are three steps: pick a book that makes you want to read, read one page and put up a finger for every mistake, and if there are less than four fingers up that's the just right book, if there's five or more fingers, try again.
• We've also been having fabulous morning meetings and sharing every single morning. The kids are free to bring in artifacts and stories from home.
• We've been learning about weather in Science. Specifically, appropriate clothing choices.

In addition, some of you may have noticed that Genesis Wasson has gone to another school. We've talked about writing him goodbye letters and you may want to talk to your child about any feelings they have about this change.

We're coming up on Winter Break very shortly!

Hope all is well,

Meital

First Grade

(858) 568-6335

Week of December 1-7, 2008

Hi All,
I hope this blog finds you in good health and winter cozy.
This blog will discuss:
announcements
standards
creative endeavors
current events and peoples in our classroom.

Announcements:
Swimming is happening. Please pack a bathing suit and towel if your child has signed up for swimming, which most of the rainforest room has.
Also, we have a number of students who do not have snack at snack time. This is very sad and disheartening for all involved, so please don't forget to send a snack.


Standards:
For those of you who are curious about what standards we are covering, they are as follows:
MR 1.2, Music 5.1, 5.2
Life Science 4.4, 4.5, 4.7
Language 2a,b,e
LE 4a
If you want the specifics of what this means, please see me, I have a binder in the classroom you can reference to.

Creative Endeavors:
We have put off our Gardening this week due to the soggy field and overcast weather in favor of journal writing and writing more in general. The children are writing about their Thanksgiving Breaks. They are also learning how to pick out a "just right" book and write a meaningful book report on it. We also went ice skating on Wednesday, which was awesome and invigorating! Please join us next Wednesday. We've been doing a lot of sharing in the mornings. On Monday, I went to the Children's School in La Jolla and saw that the morning meetings consist of a lot of sharing and we have really gotten into that and learned a lot from one another this week.

Current Events and People in our Classroom:
I am proud to announce that Innovations Academy is working with Roots and Wings. Our classroom is essentially the pilot run and it is already fruitful. Roots and Wings is a two team partnership between Aisha (a licensed counselor) and Megan (an early childhood teacher). Together, we are working on all the tools available to us as teachers without using behavior modification as a crutch. They are both very pleasurable to work with and the kids already love them!

This concludes the weekly blog. I appreciate your feedback. Hope to see you soon.

Meital