Good afternoon. Let me begin this week's newsletter with a hope that you will have a wonderful Autumn! Yes, Autumn or Fall just started this past week! The children and I did a graph last week about what their FAVORITE season was, and WINTER won out! That seems appropriate for a school in the midst of "ski country". 8/14 kids liked winter best; summer and fall tied at 3/14, and spring had 0/14 votes. (We are trying to do a graph a week where the kids vote during the morning, and we "read" data from our graph in Math class that day. Eventually, we will use the data to build our own graphs, but right now we are just concentrating on READING them.) The children were surprised to learn that Fall/ Autumn started on Thursday of last week, not on the first day of school. They were even more astonished to learn that winter does not even start until a few days before CHRISTMAS!! It's fun to vote for what we like BEST, and then share the data with our class.
On Monday, we took the Math NWEA test for the fall. I was again impressed with how calm and hard-working the kids were! Yippee!!! As with the Reading tests, the results will be shared with you soon. Now that NWEA tests are done, and DRAs are, too, we will begin our Reading Groups starting today! We will have "group" sight words, and will also have "little readers" that should be at just the right reading levels for US to be able to read them to YOU. "Little readers" go home only overnight, and need to be returned the next morning along with their protective bag so the books can circulate through our population. We also had another sampling of "apple food items", since one of the kids missed last Friday's feast! On Monday, we tried some things from last week, but also some different items, like apple juice. Last Friday, the apple bread was the big favorite. On Monday, apple bread still won a lot of votes, but the apple cider donuts were the winners.
On Wednesday, we had our first Bus Safety lesson. We listened to one of the drivers tell us how to get on and off the bus, that we need to sit down on the bus with our backpacks in our lap or on our feet, and with our backs against the back seat. She asked us to be ready and away from the road at our bus stop so we could be safe while waiting for the bus, too. We will have other bus safety lessons during the year, I believe.
On Thursday, Crescent Park had a special flag ceremony to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War. We are the ONLY school in Maine to have the HONOR of flying the flag from our flag pole, along with the Crescent Park flag and the State of Maine flag! The whole school was out there, even the 4-year-olds! The children were ALL so well-behaved and appropriate, I was proud to be one of their teachers. Some children asked questions when we came back inside about "veterans" and "Vietnam" and why some of the adults outside looked so sad, so we had a little talk to understand what was going on, and why. It seemed to answer their questions, though, and then we got back to work. For Science class on Thursday, we made predictions about how different COLORS of apples might feel and taste the same or different. Each child tried a small amount of the following varieties of apples: Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Honey Crisps, Fuji, and Cortlands. We noticed the "crunch", the texture and juiciness while chewing, and the sweetness/ tartness of each kind of apple. This coming week, we will learn more about the "scientific method", and how our senses can tell us a lot about our environment. We had a brief discussion about being safe, and how not all things were good to use our senses of taste and smell on, and how we would need to listen carefully to directions when doing experiments so we could all be safe.
Friday was Grandparents' Day, and because we wanted to read and write and do Math while our grandparents were with us , we "flipped" our Friday, and did "share" and "reading aloud" time in the morning. Then we played with playdough, read books with our grandparents, did a following directions paper, and played a math game with our grandparents during their visit. Then our grandparents went with us to Phys. Ed. The best part of having Grandparents' Day was that we could go home with our grandparents because it was the end of the school day, so there were NO TEARS!!!!
It is with sadness and sorrow that I share the news of Hailey Steward's passing. Hailey was one of our 4th graders, and the children of CPS have been involved in many fundraising activities for "Hailey's Hugs", a local organization started when the Stewards found out about Hailey's illness. Hailey has been fighting that battle herself for the last several years. She was a lively, determined little girl who bravely faced her illness. She was open and direct, and had a HUGE impact on many people's lives. Our thoughts and prayers are with her parents and brother Jared.
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