Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It is wonderful to be back in the classroom again and see all of our friends again. It sounds like everybody had a great vacation. Thank you all for sharing your week through Vacation Journals and Blog posts.
We have started our new unit on the Rainforest this week. The students will, once again, have the opportunity to rotate through our Team Harmony classrooms to learn about the rainforest. They will learn what makes a forest a rainforest, and what different types there are. They will also learn to locate them on a world map. We will also explore the different layers of the rainforest as we learn about mammals, non-mammals and plants. As a culminating writing activity, the students will write a report on a tropical rainforest animal. They will research one animal and gather information on what it looks like, where it lives, how it finds food and shelter and how it takes care of its young.
Our classroom wiki has been updated to reflect our new studies on the rainforest. We have a new folder for this area of study with many interactive sites. The students have also learned how to use child-friendly search engines online as we prepare ourselves for our animal reports. Once again, the wiki has options for you and your child as I have pre-linked child-friendly search engines already. If you go to the wiki and look for "Search Engines" on its main page, a new window will open up with many different options in many different academic areas (Click here for a direct link). These sites are geared towards children, but please remember that searching online through browsers allows your child access to the entire world-wide online community, and many sites can contain questionable, frightening and inappropriate materials. If your child researches his/her rainforest animal at home, or any other search, please stay with your child. Please start a daily conversation about internet use, effective searches and encourage your child to talk to you or a teacher if needed. We discuss these issues in school every week.
Our Rainforest unit will also lead us into our Reading Restaurant Celebration, a celebratory event when our students serve a collection of their writing pieces with friends and families (This event is currently scheduled for June 2nd in the evening. More information will follow). We have already started to decorate our classroom for this very special event. If your child has a stuffed animal at home that depicts a tropical rainforest animal and he/she wishes to have it on display in our classroom until the end of the year, he/she can certainly bring it in. These stuffed animals are only for decoration. Please visit our blog again in the next few days as we will post pictures of our newly decorated classroom.
We have a new student in our classroom. Welcome Alexis! We are thrilled to have a new friend. It is wonderful to hear about her life before moving to Vermont. She has connections to both Alaska and Minnesota!!
Lastly, there have been some reports regarding head lice at our school. We have talked about the importance of not sharing hats, hooded sweatshirts and hair accessories. We have also talked about how important it is to honor personal space and keeping our hands to ourselves. Please discuss this with your child. It is also good practice to check your child’s head periodically. Please see this week’s School Bell for more information (Click here for a direct link).
Have a great rest of the week!
Regards,
Maria McCormack