This week's newsletter has been posted to the class web page. Hope you had a great day and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

The whole school was surprised with a pizza party today. The reason for the party was because we were the school to have the highest percentage of participation in the food drive several months ago. Way to go! Your little botanists planted lima bean and sunflower seeds today. They thought they saw sprouts 15 minutes after planting them. I tried to convince (convince is one of our vocabulary words) them it would take a week or so before they would see any changes. We learned a song to remember what plants need to grow, to the tune of Head Shoulders Knees and Toes:

We know what plants need to grow. We know what plants need to grow. Air and soil and light and water. We know what plants need to grow, need to grow. These are the plant parts we know. These are the plant parts we know. Roots and stem and leaves and flower. These are the plant parts we know, that we know.

Tomorrow the Ident-a-Kid people will be at school to photograph students who have signed up and paid for this service. Details about this program were sent home on Monday. The class has a new favorite read-aloud: Bark, George! It's a story about a dog who meows, moos, or quacks each time his mother tells him to bark. His mother takes him to the vet who removes each of the animals from George's stomach. Finally. George is able to bark. His mother is so proud and wants to show off her son's wonderful bark so she takes him into a crowd of people. When she tells him to bark, he says, "hello." It's really cute!

We played a game today in which students looked at a huge selection of picture cards, and then took turns making groups with them as the rest of us tried to guess why those things formed a group. For example, Hunter stumped us by putting together a boy, girl, car, cow, pig, etc. He finally had to tell us that they were all things that move. We had a social studies lesson about friends enjoying different games. If a friend is playing something different, it's not because they don't like you, it might simply be that they want to play a different game. We learned that it's okay to keep playing the game you like best, but tell your friend you'll play with them later (not now; maybe later). Students traced the wooden, 3-dimensional geometric shapes and labeled them. Next, they matched the print to the shape that could have left the print. In writing, students created an acrostic poem with their name.

Book order purchases were sent home today, so check your child's backpack. In sign language, students learned an Earth Day poem that we might get to perform at a whole-school assembly. Students learned the vocabulary words fearless, convince, and daring. We worked together to generate ideas for an acrostic poem about Spring, and then students wrote their own poem. I found a fun acrostic poem generator that your child might enjoy using.

*I don't see the link here, but I hope that it will magically appear later...
In math, students used wooden models of the cube, cone, cylinder, and sphere to test the ways these shapes move (slide, stack, roll).

It's good to be back at school. It sounded like everyone had fun over the break. I changed a couple of learning centers and the response was very positive. My husband repaired the manual typewriter, so we have that center back, so we're using it in combination with sign language. Students work in pairs with one student fingerspelling a word and the other typing it. Students learned to identify cones, spheres, cubes, and cylinders and found objects in the room that were those shapes. Ask you child to find these shapes in objects at home.

Hello! Back to school we go! I've posted this week's newsletter to the class web page. See you tomorrow.