September 9, 2013
Whew! Though last week was very warm, it was a productive four-day week in the MAC class! Hopefully your child came home with tales of nature-masks, graphs, and stories…
We’ve been anchoring our first two weeks in the theme of courage. We read Courage by Bernard Waber the first week, a book which takes us on a journey through all kinds of courage, and we asked the students “What do you have the courage to accomplish this year?” After making a list of their ideas around courage, they chose one to “publish” with a photo of themselves, now hanging on the back wall – come take a look!
We also explored the idea of quiet by reading The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood. There are many kinds of quiet: hide-and-seek quiet, swimming under water quiet, story time quiet… Students chose what, in their opinion, is the best kind of quiet, and as a class we took on the challenge of coming up with four categories for our “best kinds of quiet.” Ask your child what category his or hers fits into… (Reading/Learning Quiet, Family/ Home Quiet, In-the-Zone Quiet, and Electronics/Indoor Quiet). Because much of our curriculum is integrated, we moved on to creating a graph with these categories and spent time interpreting the graph using a variety of math skills. Ask your child if he/she can tell you the category with the greatest, the least, the difference between two categories, etc.
Last week, students were excited to head out to the garden for the first time this year, learning about living vs. non-living items as it relates to composting (a fallen, dry leaf belongs in the living category–why?) In addition to the garden, we also took a “nature walk,” collecting all sort of nature items (leaves, twigs, seeds, rocks, etc.) To get us thinking about how different people make observations according to their perspective, we read Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
This week, we’ll be starting our Excel math program. Your child came home today with a math packet and he/she has all week to complete it. It’s due on Monday morning.
Thank you, parents, for attending Back-to-School Night! We hope you received some valuable information about the MAC class. Please feel free to email us or stop by if you have additional questions.
Please send a water bottle with your child! It’s still hot and they need much more water than we have time to provide from the water fountains–thank you! It really helps!
Upcoming Events:
Thurs. Sept. 12 – Picture Day (wear your best smile!)
Friday Sept. 13 – Patriot Day and awards assembly – wear red, white and blue to school!