Thursday

This morning, we read McElligot's Pool by Dr. Seuss. In this story, Marco talks about all kinds of fish that he just might catch while fishing in McElligot's Pool. From this book, we decided on our class name for this year. We will reveal that name tomorrow during name skits. Name skits will begin at 10:30 and we will go first. Our performance is a total of about 30 seconds, so please know if you can't make it across town from work for a 30 second performance, it's ok! If you're able, please do join us for this Community School tradition as we perform and then become part of the audience and watch all of the other classes at school perform.

     After fruit break recess, we headed down to Betsy's class for Buddies. We had help from our buddies in making "costumes" that we will wear tomorrow. Here's your hint! Any guesses on our class name?!

     We have been busy both yesterday and today finishing up some fish projects. We have one more to complete from the past couple weeks' projects. 

     After buddies, we returned to the classroom and used TAG Readers with Karen. After that, we had just enough time to squeeze in one more book before recess. I read One Less Fish by Kim Michelle Toft and Allan Sheather. This is a counting book that begins with twelve fish and counts down to zero. 

     As you're looking over paperwork from Gatherings, please let me know if you have any questions. There are two forms in there - one is orange and one is blue - that I need for you to fill out and send in. These papers are about our upcoming field trips for Fall Festival and Communication. Thanks so much!

Thursday

     What a wonderful first week it has been. We have met lots of new people and familiarized ourselves with the Community School campus. Yesterday, we met our Drama teacher, Louise. We danced and learned about our personal space. We also buddied up with our friends next door in Andrea's classroom for some science fun. We made playdough and mixed in shells and glitter for a little sparkle. One of the children said it looked like a beach, so beach playdough it was!
     This morning, Lily moved us through our morning meeting and we each shared our favorite thing about school so far. Lunch and recess were popular! We then discovered our art caddies and did some drawing and coloring. I used this time to do some one-on-one assessments with the children to figure out where everyone is and how I can best meet their needs for growth and development this year. We had buddies again today, but this time we buddied up with Betsy's class (one of the 8-11 year old classes) and made a craft that will make it's way home tomorrow after a little drying time. We will have buddies with Betsy's class every Thursday.We then came back to our room and used TAG Readers with our Technology teacher, Karen. She will come in once a week and work with the class. Some children brought a copy of our class schedule home yesterday, the rest will today. Some parents like to have a copy tucked under their visor in the car and they just glance at it before picking their child up. That way they can ask specific questions like "What did you do in music class today?" and "Did you play with your big buddy today?" Be prepared for most of the answers from your child sounding something like "nothing" and "we played." We aren't strictly sticking to our schedule the first couple of weeks, but will getting into the routine soon.
     I am working on setting up photo albums through Photobucket for our blog. I'm not a huge fan of children's photos floating around on the internet. They are currently password protected and as soon as I have it all set up, I will share the password with you all. Feel free to share the password with family that also look at the class blog.

That's all I have for now - everyone is doing awesome and adjusting well. It is going to be a great year!

Please make sure you've checked out this week's edition of Quick Notes. Let me know if you have any questions. :)