News From Our Classroom

    This coming week is the big assessment week before report cards.  There will not be homework this week in Reading ("little readers" or sight words) because I will be spending the majority of the week assessing the children's progress in this area, among others.  Homework will resume as usual on March 30th.  The Parent-Teacher conferences, held before April vacation when we were on the "Quarterly Report Cards" moves to the first week in May with the Trimester system.  This allows time after the second trimester report card for your child to chance his or her progress towards their end-of-the-year goals. The report card you receive in April will give you some idea of he or she is doing towards those goals now, and our meeting in May will bring you up-to-date with any changes that have occurred.   The main purpose for our Parent-Teacher conference in May will be to talk about where your child stands at that point academically, and what you can anticipate for next year.  Sign-ups for conference times should be coming home just before April vacation.
     Families, we need your help!   For the 14 or more years that I have been at Crescent Park School, the first grade has studied the monarch butterfly cycle.  We would "capture" monarch caterpillars each fall, put them in tanks or containers in our classrooms with milkweed for food and sticks to crawl on, and enjoy watching them go through the chrysalis into the butterfly part of their life cycle.  Once the butterflies "hatched", we would re-release them into our environment in time for them to make their annual trip south to Mexico.  However, in the last few years, it has been harder and harder to find the caterpillars.  In fact, we did not find any this past fall!  :-(   The problem seems to be one of habitat--the insects don't have what they need to continue the trip to our area!  The National Wildlife Federation is sponsoring a "Be a Hero" campaign for individuals and families to encourage them to grow the types of plants these "critters" need to find to be able to survive in our area.   They are offering to provide information and FREE seeds to any individual or family willing to participate in the project.  If this is something you might be interested in doing with your family, please go to  http://www.nwf.org/Butterfly-Heroes.aspx and sign up.  They will send you seeds for  plants for your own garden.  Maybe your family will be the one to encourage the monarch butterflies to return to Bethel!  Check it out!

     There is another thing you can do to help at Crescent Park, and it just involves recycling.  Ms. Boles has asked us to put the following in our newsletters:

        "I am on the hunt for plastic bottle caps, everything from soda bottles to coffee cans.
        The more color and sizes the better! I will also love the clear tops of water bottles. ALL
        PLASTIC TOPS ARE WELCOME! The 3rd grade is going to upcycle them into a
        beautiful artwork to replace the "hand face tree" in the main hallway."

 Please don't send them in a bottle cap at a time, but bag them in sandwich bags (or larger), and I will pass them on to her. Thanks.
     I think that's all for this week.  Hope we start to see a little Spring --as I sit here watching snowflakes fall outside my window :-(  !  Man, it's got to warm up sometime!