Hanukkah Pictures

Here are some pictures of the students enjoying today's Hanukkah festivities.  After they sequenced the recipe for making latkes and helped mix everything together, they broke into groups to play the dreidel game with M&M's.  Shayden even bought in real chocolate gelt for us to play with!  They kids were very excited about this. 

While they played our awesome parent helpers were busy cooking our latkes.  Once they were ready everyone sat down and tasted their latkes.  We had about a 99% satisfaction rate!

Such a great way to end our holiday studies!  Another big thank you to everyone who donated supplies to make the last three weeks happen.  And another big thank you to all the parent helpers over the last three weeks.  I truly cannot pull off our Friday celebrations without all the help from my parent helpers!  You are all very appreciated!  I hope all my families have a very happy holiday's and a safe vacation!  Enjoy your time with your kiddos, I will see everyone on January 2, 2018.   -Ms. Shaw

Happy Hanukkah Week!

Happy Hanukah!  Welcome to our final week before break.  It may be only 5 days, but it is a very full 5 days.  Read on to hear all about our very busy and very festive week ahead.

Math:  More of making 10.  We will make 10 using the commutative property, with one addend being an eight (which means we will have to borrow 2 from the other addend), and solving problems with parts of 7, 8 and 9.  Really, it's all about teaching children how to add by turning an addend into 10.

Language Arts:  We did not get to spend a lot of time on last weeks story "Did You See Chip."  The children kept asking, but our schedule was super busy.  Therefore, this week we will stay with the story and the spelling that goes with it.  We will probably take our spelling test on Thursday.  We will also read books about Hanukkah.

Social Studies:  Hanukkah is our third and final holiday of study.  We will once again be focusing on who celebrates this holiday, why, and how.  On Friday we will celebrate what we learned about this Jewish holiday by playing the dreidel game and making latkes.  

Please remember, if you have signed up for any items for Friday you can bring them in anytime this week!  Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Christmas Craft morning!  Your donations make this morning possible.  Thank you to all the parent volunteers who came in on Friday morning and helped us with our crafts and our gingerbreadhouses!  Your help in immeasurable and I appreciate you so much!  Pictures of our morning are below.

Canned Food Drive:  A total success!  Our class brought in 65 (around there, may have been 63 but at the time of this writing I cannot remember which it is so I'm going with 65 😀) cans of food!  The children were so excited to put their items in the cart and at the end they had a surprise from a very special guest....Santa.  The looks on their faces were priceless.  Check out the pictures below.  Altogether Marshall gathered nearly 2,000 cans a food, and that is a huge holiday win!  Thank you room 9 families for your contributions!

Save the Dates:

• Wednesday, December 13th - PTO Craft Night - Students can show up in their holiday pajamas, enjoy cocoa and cookies, make some crafts (great for presents for grandparents!) and enjoy some free family fun. 

• December 15th - Hanukkah Celebration

• Winter Break December 16th - January 1st.  School resumes on Tuesday, January 2nd.

As promised, here are our Christmas Craft Morning pictures.  Enjoy these cute little faces!  -Ms. Shaw

  

Christmas Week Dec 4th-8th

Happy Holiday's!  This week we begin our study on Christmas!  More information about this below, along with some cute picture from our Kwanzaa feast, and info about everything happening this week in class.  Here's the scoop...

Math:  We will wrap up three addend addition and move into making tens when one addend is 7, 8, or 9.  This constitutes borrowing some from the other addend to make the 7, 8, or 9 a ten - which is easier to work with.  I love this math unit, and every year the kids make some neat connections when they begin exploring adding in this manner.  Neat stuff!

Language Arts:  Our next story in Hartcourt will be "Did You See Chip?"  The kids love this because it is written in a play format, and we read it in class as such.  It also has a fun pattern to the story.  In Daily 5 we will work on the reading strategies of use the beginning and ending sounds and skip the word and come back.  

Social Studies:  This week we will begin our unit on Christmas.  We will focus on who celebrates Christmas, why, and how.  Friday will be our big Christmas Craft Morning!  This will be the day our students make their parent gifts, and decorate their gingerbread houses!  If you signed up for any supplies, please send them in by Friday morning!!  We still need graham crackers and frosting to make our gingerbread houses.  If you are a girl, please send in a box of graham crackers!  If you are a boy please send in a can of white frosting!  If you have already sent in your donation - THANK YOU!   THANK YOU to everyone who has signed up and sent in their supplies/donations so far!!  These three weeks could not happen without your help and they truly are so educational and just plain fun and exciting!  

Extra Scoop:

• Canned Food Drive is in full swing!  We are collecting for the rest of this week, when they will be picked up on Friday during our annual canned food parade.  The class who collects the most can wins a pizza party.  Our total so far is...zero!  Woomp Woomp.  I'm not aiming for the pizza party, but it would be nice if the kids had a can or two each to add to the cart during the parade!  Come on families!  Let's bring in those cans for those in need!  

• Thursday is extra special early release for report card prep.  12:25 is our release time, please plan accordingly. 

• Wednesday, December 13th is the PTO holiday craft night.  Students can wear their holiday pajamas, make some crafts, drink cocoa and eat cookies.  I hear they will also have a chance to take their picture with Elsa!  A free night of holiday family fun! 

Cherry on Top:

Here are some fun picture of our Kwanzaa feast on Friday!  The students learned so much about this holiday, and it was fun to wrap the week with our own "harvest" celebration.  A few of them even decided to "cheers" each other.  So adorable!

Habari Gani!  What a feast.  Hope everyone had a great weekend.  Can't wait for week two of our holiday studies. -Ms. Shaw