Weekly Update

Dear Families, Thank you all for coming to our Reading Restaurant last night. We hope you enjoyed all the goodies at our "Sea Critters Cafe". Thank you for also taking the time to write such thoughtful comments to our authors and noticing our ocean-themed decorations. We had a wonderful time and appreciate your support. The students will take home menus, original stories and comments today. The scrap-books will remain in class until the end of the year!\ Here are some pictures from yesterday.

Have a great weekend, Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families, We had a terrific week in our classroom. The students worked very hard on their animal reports finishing up their research and pictures. We are very excited to share these at our Reading Restaurant next week. The Reading Restaurant is scheduled for May 17th, with 2 seating sessions. The first session begins at 6pm and runs until 6:40pm. The second seating session starts at 6:50pm and ends at 7:30pm. Your child is expected to "work" in our restaurant when your family attends. We will decided on jobs next week as the students will share in the responsibilities of working in our "kitchen" and as "waiters and waitresses". We voted on a restaurant name earlier this week. We had many terrific choices but eventually settled on "Sea Critters Cafe". We are currently working on the sign for our entry. Last week our visiting teacher from China, Tao, joined our classroom. She taught us some Chinese and saw how we integrated technology in our math class. Here are some pictures from that wonderful visit. Tao will return to Team Harmony and our classroom the week after Reading Restaurant. Thank you Tao for visiting us again.

We received letters from our pen-pals in Costa Rica as well this week. They were wonderful, with detailed letters about life in Costa Rica and many pictures from the area. We learned about toucans, mangoes, beans and rice and soccer. We learned that while there are many differences between our two countries, there are also many similarities. Ask your child to explain some of this. Your child will take home this letter next week as we are still writing our responses to them. The school celebrated another Swarm Party on Tuesday with a "Stop, Drop and do the Honey Bee Dance". The entire team met in the kiva and danced the honey bee dance together. It was so much fun. We even had the opportunity to practice the dance with our Kindergarten buddies earlier in the week. Enjoy the pictures.

Lastly, I want to extend a thank you to Anna's dad who visited our classroom. He brought in various computer parts, such as fiber optic cables, computer chips of different sizes and shapes, and computer tape which the students used along with more traditional materials such as pom-poms, pipe cleaners, tissue papers and balloons to create imaginary ocean animals. We had so much fun creating our creatures. Thank you Igor for taking the time to share this wonderful opportunity with us. Enjoy the pictures.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend. Regards, Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families, It is great to be back together again, learning together. It sound like the children had a great vacation. Some friends traveled far, others stayed closer to home, but they returned to school eager to share and willing to learn new things. We continued our animal writing reports this week and we are almost done. This week, the students added chapters on how their animal takes care of its babies and another chapter on fun facts. We are also adding a table of contents and some students even have a glossary section! We look forward to sharing these reports and all of our other writing on May 17th when we have our Reading Restaurant. Our Reading Restaurant will have two sessions; one starting at 6pm and ending at 6:40pm, and another sessions between 6:45-7:30. I will send an email with specific information about assignments for each session. Please make sure that you and your family arrive early as we only have 5 minutes for seating. You can invite as many friends or family-members as you can and want, of course. We understand that sometimes family-members are away on trips or have other prior commitments. Thank you. This week the students on team Harmony had the opportunity to participate in another 4 Winds class. Once again, thank you parent volunteers for putting these terrific classes together. The students learned about forest birds this time and had the opportunity to engage in outdoor games and learning activities as well as inside station work. Ask your child to explain how we explored how birds eat their food with their beaks. Also ask your child to explain how we learned to search for specific markers on the birds to identify them. Lastly, thank you all for coming in to our parent conferences before the break. It was great to chat with all of you and show your child's learning and progress. Thank you for your continued support in your child's education. Have a great weekend! Regards, Maria