March Homework

Due to the snow day and delay this week, the North Carolina Reading Association's annual conference next week, and play practice the following week, we will not take class time to work on sight words. Therefore your child will not have their usual assigned sight or spelling words for the remainder of March. However, please continue to work on their "old" words at home. I'm also curious about reading logs and whether you feel they are helpful or hindering your child at home. Ideally, reading logs keep kids accountable, but I understand that they may be creating a dread of reading which is completely counterproductive. Let's forgo the log and just read with your kids, or have them read to you- hopefully for at least 20 minutes daily. We will re-assess moving forward with the logs in April, but I would love to hear your feedback.

As part of addressing the whole child we do our best to "teach" empathy & compassion and expose children to a variety of view points. This weekend at West Market St. United Methodist Church (GSO) The Compassion Experience will simulate the life of a child in different country. This is not something we will do as a class/school, but I wanted to share with you if you were interested as a family. Click here for details.

Flat Stanley and trip tomorrow

It's been a lot of fun to see all of the neat places that Stanley was able to visit! In just our class we were able to see him travel all over the world! The Flat Stanley project was a school-wide initiative, and we appreciate your participation. The upper grades will make trip-tic boards to present what they learned from this project; these will be on display in the hallway March 16th from 7-8. However, our class' work is permanently on display in the main hallway on the bulletin board. Be sure to check out all of Stanley's fun travels the next time you are on campus! 

Speaking of travels, we will be traveling to the Apple Store at the Friendly Center tomorrow. We have been chosen to participate in the creation of a robot at the store! We will leave promptly at 8:00 tomorrow morning; if you are running late you may want to meet us at the Apple Store. Also, if your child requires a booster/carseat please send it with them tomorrow morning. We will return by 10:00 and will resume instruction at school. 

February Trips

We have a lot of things planned this month, so I wanted to make sure that everyone is "in the know" with our upcoming events and trips.

• 2/8 (Tomorrow) Class trip to the High Point library (please send in booster seats).
• 2/9- Our class will not participate in the whole-school rehearsal; we will have class as usual.
• 2/14- Class Valentine's exchange- Please prepare Valentine's for our class only (10); we will have class as usual before lunch. After lunch we will prepare placemats, have an etiquette lesson and decorate cookies. 
• 2/19- School closed in observance of President's Day. 
• 2/21- Class trip to the Apple Store for a robotics lesson (please send in booster seats). 

Please send in your Flat Stanley projects ASAP if you have not done so already. Our class' projects will be going up on the bulletin board in the main hallway! 

February- In the Know

Our themes this month are weather, climate and dental health. During this month we will study animals that hibernate and/or prepare for winter. Our focus in ELA is decoding multisyllabic words (group B) and segmenting and manipulating CVC words (group A). During this month we will also start our look at the North Carolina Children's Book Award nominees (see below), and our class will vote on its favorite. Students will be busy in STEM this month exploring the components of electricity and translating that knowledge to the world of robotics. 

Of course, February also means Valentine's Day! Please note that primary does not follow the same Valentine procedures as the lower/upper school. Our class will have our own celebration that day, and we will pass out Valentine's to our class only.  Any other candy given by students outside primary to primary will be collected and used communally. We will send out more information about our class' Valentine's party soon. We encourage students to write the names of the students they are giving Valentine's to on their Valentines as an opportunity to practice penmanship, spelling and learning friends' names. Please note this is different than the rest of lower school.  

The following is our class list:
Dane
Max
Simon
Lucas
Aiden
Peyton
Sam
Sammy
Cooper 
Ethan

Happy 100th Day of School!

The 100th day is a big milestone in the Primary school year! Our class has been looking forward to this day since the first day of school when we started counting our pennies. Each day we add a new penny to our chart until we have 100 pennies. Today we looked at several ways to make 100, we wrote about what we would buy with $100, and what we would look like if we were 100 years old!

Because we broke from our usual routine today, there is no homework packet for tonight. However, we will resume with our usual structure tomorrow.

100th Day of School- Monday

On Monday we will celebrate the 100th day of school with curriculum-based activities and a trip to the Dollar Store (each day of school we have been adding pennies to a chart- with our 100 pennies we will go shopping). If your child requires a booster or carseat please leave it with them Monday morning.

January- In the Know

I hope that everyone had a fun and restful holiday, and that your child is ready to return to school relaxed and ready to learn! Our theme for January is “house and home.” We will explore how landscape and climate have an effect on the kinds of structures used for shelter. Fundations group A is working on building phonemic awareness by blending, segmenting and manipulating sounds in CVC words. Group B will be introduced to “glued” sounds ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk & unk. Both groups are working on reading with accuracy and prosody. The concepts of force and motion will be introduced in STEM, and students will discover the components of a simple machine through hands-on activities. The 100^th day of school is later this month; we will celebrate by collecting our 100 pennies and going to the Dollar Store!

We will also complete middle of year assessments for both ELA and mathematics this month, so homework will be a little lighter this week and next. 

We partnered with the high school before the break. Each of our students was partnered with a high school student who read to them. We plan on doing this more often- next time our students will read the class book to the high schoolers. The following are a few snapshots: