Penguin Reports

This week we continued to work hard on our penguin reports.  At the beginning of this week we organized our notes on a graphic organizer to help plan our report.  We are now using the information from our planners to create reports using complete sentences.  This has been a lot of hard work, but time well spent!  I have been so impressed with the work everyone is doing.  It is nice to see the progress everyone has made in writing since the beginning of the school year.  Next week we will finish writing our reports and create life sized penguins that support our learning about penguins.  My hope is to have these completed by the end of next week so we can invite our families in one afternoon the following week for a penguin report sharing party.  I will post a firm date sometime next week when I have a better idea of when everyone will be ready for this.

We are still planning to snowshoe next Friday (Feb. 4th) and the following Friday (Feb. 11th).  We are still looking for volunteers to join us for this activity.  As of now, we have only two volunteers.  Many thanks to Holly Whitcomb for offering to lead an indoor activity for us on one of these dates as well.  We are still looking for a volunteer to lead an indoor activity the other week.

Next week we will begin a unit about magnets.  We will be learning about magnets and magnetic fields, and doing experiments with magnets.  If anyone has an interest or a lot of knowledge in this area and you would like to come in and share it with us, please send me an email.  We love to have parent "experts" join us for our learning.

Surprise Snow Day!

I hope everyone enjoyed the surprise snow day today, even with the temperatures as cold as they are!  The month of February will be a very busy one.  Our school is making February "Wellness Month".  As part of our participation in this theme,  Adventurers will be snowshoeing from school on Friday, February 4th and Friday, February 11th.  Please send me an email if you have been finger printed and are interested in joining us on either of those Fridays.  We will be snowshoeing from about 1:20 until the end of the school day.  The team will be snowshoeing with their Unified Arts Groups and each group will snowshoe one of those Fridays.  We are interested in having an indoor option for the other group during that time.  We would like to offer Yoga or something else along that line.  If you have a skill in some form of exercise that you would like to share with the team, please send me an email!  Hmmmmm....why is Zynnia coming to mind?????  We will also be doing a wellness unit to go along with these activities and will be learning about healthy choices in all areas of our lives.

The SCS Book Fair will take place during the week of February 7th.  I will provide more information about the book fair as we get closer to that event.  We will also be having a Valentine exchange on Monday, February 14th.  I will send home more information (including a class list) about this event in the near future.  Please send me an email if you are interested in providing a healthy treat or drink for our exhange.

We will continue our learning about penguins into February.  This week we will be learning about Emperor penguins.  This is the sixth kind of penguin we have learned about!  We will be making stuffed penguins and end our nonfiction unit of study in literacy with a penguin report.  This has been an amazing opporunity to integrate all areas of the curriculum for students and provide them with authentic measuring activities. 

ECHO Field Trip

The Adventurers Team had a fantastic field trip to ECHO today.  We started our day with a workshop about water and the water cycle.  We created our own Champlain Water Basin, learned about the water cycle in the Champlain Water Basin and learned about differences between the Vermont and New York sides of the Basin.  We had a great opportunity to act out what happens when snow and rain falls.  This was a wonderful culminating activity for our study about water.  After lunch, we explored the different areas of ECHO in small groups and were able to expand our learning in many areas.  Many thanks to all of our parent champerones for making this trip possible!  I hope you enjoy the slide show of our trip!

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Hands On Nature/Sugar on Snow

Today our Hands On Nature lesson was focused on air.  We watched a puppet show that showed us how air is important to both plants and animals and observed an egg and bottle experiment that showed us that fire lowers air pressure by using up oxygen.  We also had opportunities to do a number of different stations that helped us gain a better understanding of air.  Many thanks to our Hands On Nature volunteers for another terrific science lesson!

We finally ate our sugar on snow today!  Nigel has been waiting patiently for over a month for the opportunity to share his sugar on snow with our team.  Today was the perfect day with the new snowfall.  Many thanks to Nigel and his family for sharing this special treat with us!

Tomorrow we will be learning some dances to prepare everyone for Friday night's Contradance.  We will also continue our learning about penguins.

Finally, please be sure to put your child's name on all their winter gear.  Many students have been losing gloves, hats, even boots and it is very difficult to track them down when they are not labeled.  If your child is missing any of his/her winter gear it might be a good idea to stop by the school and check lost and found in the main hallway and the shelf above the cubbies in the Adventurers space.  I have been asking every day if any of the clothing we have found belongs to anyone, but I can't find anyone to claim any of it!  There are at least 8 gloves/mittens, a few hats, a pair of size 5 snow pants and some boots looking for their owner!

I hope many of you can make it to Friday night's Contradance.  It should be a fun family event!

Another Busy Week

Today we took a break from penguins and had a day of small group work and games during math.  We will pick up with Penguins again on Monday.  There are no "Home Connections" with this unit.  Instead, your child will be bringing home an envelope of travel games every Friday.  These games will be played both at school and at home so it is important that the envelope comes back on Monday morning with the Friday Folder.  For this week's homework I assigned the "Journey to Antarctica" game.  The envelope also includes the "Penguins on Board" game.  We have not had time to play "Penguins on Board" in school yet, but if your child is confident they understand how to play they may also do this game for homework.

Our field trip to ECHO is planned for Thursday, January 20th.  As of now I have only two parents who have volunteered to join us.  If you would like to join us we have room for one more parent.  Please send me an email if you are interested.  Please be sure to pack a lunch for your child on that day as we will be spending the entire day at ECHO and will be eating lunch there.

We are hoping to plan a field trip to Sleepy Hollow sometime in February.  We will need a large number of parents who are finger printed to do this field trip.  Please send me an email if you have been finger printed and are interested in joining us for this field trip.  If we can't gather enough parents, we will probably do some snowshoeing from school instead.

The PTO Red Barn Fundraiser came home today in your child's Friday Folder.  If you decide to participate in this fundraiser it is due back on January 21st.

Have a great weekend,
Deb

Penguins, Penguins, Penguins!

We have started off the new year with an integrated math unit about Penguins. This week we have been learning about penguins and Antarctica with a focus on various kinds of measurement. We created penguin folders, played a game called "Journey to Antarctica" and did a water experiment today. For this experiment we used different amounts of ice, cold water and hot water to make the temperature in our cup 60 degrees F. We have been discussing how penguins have adapted to their very cold environment, where they spend their spring and fall (which are the opposite months of ours) and learning about different kinds of penguins. In addition to this, we have been learning more about non-fiction text during readers' and writer's workshop. We have been noticing different features of non-fiction text such as diagrams, captions and bold print and have been discussing their purpose. Today everyone chose a particular kind of penguin to learn about. We are working in small groups to gather information and will eventually use that information to create reports. In addition to this, we are making connections between our learning about penguins and our study of water and the water cycle during science. Today we did another fun experiment during science. Ask your child to tell you all about this.

Next Friday evening there will be a Family Contradance at the Town Hall beginning at 6:30 pm. The Adventurers team held one last year that was a great success, so Joplin James has set up an opportunity for families to participate again this year. This is open to everyone, so if you have friends that are interested in coming, please bring them along. It should be great fun! They are asking that each family who comes make a $5 donation to benefit the Champlain Valley Folk Festival.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of our experiments below:)

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