Hi,
We had a wonderful visit with our pen pals on Dec. 4. We made them beaded candy cane ornaments and created painted ornaments with them. We also played holiday games and discussed our favorite parts of the holidays. We will be seeing them again on January 30. On that day we will be meeting in the art room and participating in the Empty Bowls Project with them. We will all make bowls with Mrs. Arnold that will then be fired and later glazed by us. The bowls will be donated to the Empty Bowl Project and will be available for purchase for $10. When buying a bowl, the buyer gets a bowl of soup from Chili's and other food and drinks donated by restaurants. The money will be donated to the Round Rock Serving Center. The event will take place in April. It is a wonderful opportunity to have a service project within our service project with our pen pals! You are welcome to join us on Wednesday, January 30 at 1:00 in the art room.
On Thursday, we will be having fun with our first grade reading buddies while creating gingerbread houses together. We will meet in the morning and use icing, graham crackers, and candy to transform our empty milk cartons into beautiful sweet holiday homes. We will bring them home on Thursday.
Thank you to Mrs. Schmitz for coming into our classroom to teach us about Hanukkah! She and Rebecca showed us a menorah, read us a book, answered many questions, and even gave us some chocolate gold coins! It was interesting to learn about holidays around the world and the children loved it!
Thursday will be our holiday party at 2:00. Mrs. McCulloch will be sending an email asking for donations. If you don't receive it by Monday pm, let me know so that I can get it to you. As part of our party we will be collecting books for the Round Rock Serving Center. When we went to volunteer there on the first Saturday in December, the book case in the waiting area was almost empty. Luckily we brought donated books from the FCE Literacy Night but we still left with many shelves empty. I walked in with the books and the waiting children came right to me eagerly to gather some books. Hopefully, we will get lots of books from our class to help fill up that book case for the holiday break.
Our class will be having a Secret Santa activity. The children will fill out a form with some of their favorite things and turn it in. Then they will randomly select a form and chose their Secret Pal. They will write complimentary notes to that friend throughout the week and keep their identity a secret. They will bring in a candy bar or a snack for their secret pal on Thursday and we will reveal who had who. I think that this will be a fun, community building activity for our class. If you aren't able to provide a candy bar or snack for the secret pal, let me know. Encourage your child to try to keep the secret until Thursday!
Last week we took Curriculum Based Assessments in Reading, Math, Writing, and Science. Our class worked very hard on all of these assessments and I will be using the data gained to guide instruction in small groups and extension groups after the holidays.
In Reading-we have been working on reading and learning from our biographies. We will be presenting our presentations beginning on Monday. We will be reading and evaluating a short version of The Christmas Carol this week. We will reading to determine character changes, compare and contrast the three spirits, determine a theme or lesson learned, write a summary and evaluate each other's summaries, as well as write about what parts of the story we liked or didn't like and why. We will also be practicing fluency using a readers theater of The Christmas Carol, Miranda's Dream (Christmas Story), and The Miracle of the Candles (Hanukkah story). We will be videotaping our performances on Thursday.
Writing: We will be finishing our revisions and editing of our biography essays this week. They will also be choosing to write holiday poems, holiday essays, personal narratives about the holidays, letters to soldiers and/or pen pals, or holiday fantasy stories. We will be working on some power writing Be sure to encourage your child to email me over the break and/or go to our moodle page and add some posts to several discussions. He/she can also respond to other student's posts. It is a nice way to practice writing as they keep in touch.
Math: Fractions, division, multiplication, and problem solving will be our focus. We will also think about the traditional song The Twelve Days of Christmas and figure out how many items were given over those twelve days.
Science: We conducted some soil experiments last week. We investigated and used our senses to determine the properties of four different soils. We tested for water retention of each soil type by putting soil in pantyhose and suspending the soil/pantyhose in a beaker. We added 200 milliliters of water and subtracted the amount of water that drained through from 200 to determine the amount of water retained in the soil. Then we planted radish seeds in the different soil types and watched what happened each day for five days. We didn't add more water so we made predictions and our hypothesis of which soil would allow the seeds to grow fastest and sustain growth. We will write about our observations on Monday. We will talk a bit more about soil this week.
Social Studies: We learned about three empresarios in Texas-Stephen F. Austin, Martin de Leon, and Green DeWitt. We researched them and took notes. We read letters from people wanting to be accepted into Austin's colony and determined whether Austin should let them come or not and why. We will be talking a bit more about empresarios and then beginning to discuss the Texas Revolution when we return in January.
Dates to remember:
Monday, Dec. 17-Biography Presentations due, Service Club meeting to organize food donations, Bring in more food for our families
Wednesday, Dec. 19-Science Checkpoint #2 is due
Thursday, Dec. 20-Holiday party at 2:00, Bring in gently used books for RR Serving Center, Service Club meets after school with guest speaker (my daughter Blair will be here to talk about our trip to Honduras and help us organize a campus drive for them)
Friday,Dec. 21-Beginning of holiday break-be sure to read at least 150 min. per week, practice math facts and write often
Have a safe and happy holiday! Thank you for sharing your children with me! I love coming to school each day!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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