Hanukkah 2019

Happy Hanukkah! Welcome to our last 5 days of the semester. Here is what we have going on for our last week of school for 2019...

Math:  We will be looking at using the commutative property to make a 10, and making a 10 when one addend is an eight. I also want to spend a day on making a 10 to add 3 addends, this seems to be a difficult concept for our group and I want to revisit this before we go to break.

ELA:  We will be continuing our Daily 5 routines and finishing our sight word testing as well.  Also focusing on long u words, with our spelling test taking place on Thursday this week. Please have your child double up on writing their words one night this week.  

Social Studies:  Hanukkah is our third and final holiday study.  Again, we will be focusing on who celebrates, how, when, and why. On Friday we will celebrate what we learned about this Jewish holiday by playing the dreidel game and making latkes.  I still need a couple of parent volunteers for Friday, as well as a few other items, otherwise we are basically set. If you can help us out pleas sign up on the updated SignUp Genius https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b0e4fa4a72ca0ff2-cultural1. Thank you!

This Week at Marshall:  We have many school wide events happening this week at Marshall. Please mark your calendars for the following....

• Wednesday, December 18th - 5:00-6:30 - PTO Craft Night. Join us for a night of FREE family fun! Lots of fun crafts, cocoa, pictures, and more!

• Marshall's Family Holiday Lunch - Come and enjoy a lunch with your child. 1st grade eats at 11:35, but feel free to come a few minutes early to find parking and grab your kiddo to beat the lines. Hope to see everyone there.

• Hanukkah Celebration - Room 9 - 9:00-10:30 - you may drop off your supplies anytime during the week for this.

• Lost and Found will be laid out in the science lab Wednesday-Friday.  Looking for that jacket or jackets your child did not bring home? That beanie  or mittens grandma gave them and they lost? Please feel free to stop by and peruse our large pile of lost items. I'm sure your missing winter gear is in there somewhere. Anything that goes unclaimed after Friday will be donated to Big Brothers/Big Sisters. 

Christamas Craft Morning and Canned Food Drive :  This is always one of my favorite days of the year. Thank you to all of my parent volunteers. As you can tell, this day would not happen without your help. Thank you to everyone who donated supplies as well. Making a day like Christmas Craft Morning happen is such a group effort, and I appreciate everyone who contributed to make this morning happen. The children loved making their gingerbread houses and parent gifts. Part way through we stepped into the hall for our canned food drive. The students put our food into baskets and we even had a surprise visit from Santa! Here are some pictures of our memorable morning.

What a bunch of Christmas Cuties! -Ms. Shaw

Kwanzaa and Christmas 2019

Happy Holidays! We are entering week 2 of our 3 week holiday unit. Last week we finished up Kwanzaa and this week we are learning about Christmas. Please read on for all the details and more information about what is happening in room 9.

Math:  We are trudging on with adding 1 to 9 to make a 10. A big concept, today there was breakthroughs! More practice tomorrow and then we will test what we know. After that we will move on from counting on from 10 or taking from a 10 to solve subtraction problems.

ELA:  Our spelling is long i and long o this week. We will be doing our quarterly sight word testing and AIMS testing this week as well. We will also be reading a story about flamingos and concentrating on the -ed and -ing endings. 

Social Studies:  Habari Gani? Ask your students what this Kwanzaa greeting means, they learned all about it last week. I love starting our holiday unit with Kwanzaa because every year the students know almost nothing about this holiday, and by the end of the week they can tell us who celebrates Kwanzaa, the reason for the holiday, how it is celebrated, and the traditions and beliefs associated with the Kwanzaa holiday. This week we enter more familiar territory, Christmas. Although the students know so much in regards to many of the traditions that occur at this time of year, we are about to learn about a lot of the who celebrates and why. Next week - Hanukkah. 

Holiday Celebrations:  Thank you to everyone who helped make our Kwanzaa feast a huge success! The children had so much fruits and veggies and more! I was so busy serving up our "harvest" I did not have time to snap a picture. I promise I will be able to get some the next two weeks however.  I will be updating our online sign-up to match our paper sign-up by tomorrow morning. You can check that here   https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0E4FA4A72CA0FF2-cultural1.  Although it appears we need items for this Friday, we do not! We are all set, and have everything we need! Thank you families! Please remember, all girls need to bring in a box of graham crackers and all boys need to bring in a can of vanilla frosting by Friday morning so we can make our gingerbread houses. Thank you to those who have already brought in their supplies! 

America's Favorite Crossing Guard:  We have 3 more days to vote Mr. Billy for Americas Favorite Crossing Guard. He is currently in third place, we would love to get him to first place (only 191 votes away from 2nd place as of now). Please take the time to vote here daily http://wshe.es/HlWecmiG. You can help spread the word by sharing the link on your social media and asking your family and friends to vote daily until December 12th. He is truly so deserving, let's make this happen! 

Canned Food Drive:  We are currently collecting cans and boxes of nonperishable food items to help restock our food pantry here at Marshall, and to donate to St. Mary's Food Bank as well. The class who brings in the most cans will win a pizza party from PTO. We currently have 0, so we have a ways to go. There will be a parade to collect the cans on Friday, and usually there is a special appearance by a special someone during our parade. Let's can hunger and show our kids the importance of giving back this year. Thank you for your donations. 

Fratelli Fundraiser: The good folks at Fratelli Pizza are once again hosting a 10% back to Marshall night Tuesday, December 10th. If you order pizza from the Ft. Valley location just mention Marshall and 10% of your sales will come back to our school. Thank you Fratelli Pizza for your continuous support of Marshall! Best pie in town! 

Special Early Release:  Don't forget, this Thursday (December 12th) is a special early release day. We will be releasing at our 12:25 time. Please plan for child care accordingly. Friday will still be our regularly scheduled 12:25 release time as well. 

Wow! We are packing it in this week. Thanks for making all our happenings happen! -Ms. Shaw