Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We had our first 4 Winds science class this week.  Every month, our 4 Winds parent volunteers come in to teach us science in an engaging, hands-on experience.  This week, we learned about insects and bugs.  Our lessons start in our kiva with a team-wide puppet show.  Then, the students break into smaller work-stations.  In these work-stations the students have the opportunity to explore various ideas of the content taught.  This week, we acted like scientists outside, collecting bugs and sharing our observations together in a small group, using our senses to describe them, rather than our feeling or ideas that they are "cool-looking" or "awesome". We learned that scientists are always objective and stick to the facts!  In another station, we learned all about the parts of insects and bugs as we assembled "real" insects again using felt pieces.  Lastly, the students learned about insect characteristics and attributes through an interactive matching game. Thank you parents for volunteering for this program. Here are some pictures.

On Friday last week, we learned more about Rosh Hashanah in our classroom.  Lee's mother visited our classroom and did a short read aloud and taught us about making wishes for the new year.  She brought apples and honey for all of us too!  Thank you Mrs. Friedman for teaching us about this wonderful holiday!  If you and your family have a special holiday you would like to share with us, let me know.  We would love to learn more about it.

Lastly, please note that I sent out an email with sign-ups for parent -teacher conferences.  I am looking forward to chatting with all of you about your child's progress and academic learning at school.  Let me know if you are having problems signing up.

Also, if your child has not brought in his/her own head-phones for our computers, it would be great if you could.  We are integrating technology more and more every week and as we sometimes experience lice problems, it would be great if your child could have his/her own set.  Please let me know if you and your family need assistance purchasing these.  I am happy to help out.

Regards,
Maria