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