Acorn Nursery News from Ms. Jan:
It was so nice to see the children again on Thursday after the Mardi Gras break. And, as it is nice to have some crazy, chaotic weeks and evenings of fun and frolicking, it is nice, and necessary, to get back to our regular rhythm of bedtimes and school.
We have postponed Peniston Campus Class Picture Day from this Wednesday, March 13 to two weeks from now, Wednesday, March 27. So WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 will be our PENISTON CAMPUS CLASS PICTURE DAY. I will remind you of this again as it gets closer, but please mark it on your calendars now.
And about next year...I have prepared the checklists for the Kindergarten teachers of the students that are old enough to go to Kindergarten next year. As we all know, we work with development rather than age and these checklists show which skills for Kindergarten are mastered and what we are currently working on with your children. Ms. Heidi has visited to observe the students that requested Peniston and we are well on our way in recommending the students that will be moving on to Kindergarten at Peniston next year.
Jasmine Kindergarten News from Ms. Diana:
The last two weeks of school have been filled with parades, celebrations and a short vacation. We've created our Mardi Gras decorated masks, we've enjoyed King Cake alongside our nourishing snacks and we've allowed informal show-and-tell since there was so much to show after the parades. This week we went back to our regular rhythm and started our spring circle, we've done painting on Thursday and cleaning and crafts on Friday.
Magnolia Kindergarten News from Ms. Heidi:
Grade 1 News from Ms. Contento:
We had a lovely two days of school this week. Celebrating Dr. Seuss’s Birthday on Thursday was a perfect way to spend the day. My students enjoyed being read to by the seventh and eighth-grade students. I had four cozy reading groups all reading a great assortment of Dr. Seuss books during the main lesson.
The next day we jumped right back into our math main lesson by introducing vertical addition. My students enjoyed learning how to write and solve these problems in their main lesson books. This coming week we will continue doing addition and subtraction problems during main lesson.
Students will write their number patterns in their main lesson books. So far they have the twos and fives, this week we will add the threes and tens. We have also focused on mental math. The children have had fun challenging me with difficult mental math problems to solve. I give them mental math problems all day long.
Grade 2 News from Ms. Mullen:
We began a new block on Friday with a longer discussion on adjectives (aka describing words), and did a silly mad lib. We are now officially in our second Heroines and Heroes block. I started off the block with the story of Amma, the hugging saint. We are also looking at all of the ways to make long vowel sounds. We touched on this a little bit at the beginning of the year but are now focusing in a bit more. Today we started with A and generated a word list. Most words contained a silent e, but students also found ai, ay, and a all on its own. We are also beginning cursive. Every morning after form drawing the students spend 10 minutes practicing, however, many are working on their cursive during recess and other moments of downtime. I love seeing how excited they get about learning something new. We are also working on the 8s skip counting every morning.
Grades 5 / 6 News from Ms. Nelson:
MAIN LESSON: BUSINESS MATH - On Thursday and Friday we were able to explore what taxes are, and the services we receive from them. In order to understand more about them, we worked on the concept of percent - reviewing what it means, and how we can convert percent into a decimal and fraction, then working out how to determine 10% by moving the decimal place in a number. On Friday, my husband Nick visited the class in his official capacity as a criminal investigator for the IRS. In addition to the very popular bulletproof vest and handcuffs, he also brought a variety of gadgets that he uses to hack into phones and computers looking for evidence of financial crimes. He also invited some students up to demonstrate the process whereby Al Capone was able to keep his hands "clean" of illegal activities in 1920s Chicago. He also showed how the IRS was able to follow the money trail that got him convicted on tax evasion - the first big IRS case in American history. At the conclusion of his talk, Nick then proceeded to handcuff me, following the proper procedures, which the class seemed to enjoy a little TOO much. All in all, it was a pretty exciting day in the 5/6 class!
Grades 7/8 News from Mr. Pauzolis:
Our week was short and sweet, as we returned from Mardi Gras break! We started off Thursday morning by celebrating reading in our PJ's! Much of the class went to visit with the 1st and 2nd Graders and read them stories, and the few who remained surprised me by deciding to form an impromptu study group! They chose to devote their entire morning to studying for their Astronomy test. I'd like to extend special praise to Nate, who enthusiastically (and totally without prompting!) initiated this study group. Nate became a vocal cheerleader for the other students, encouraging them to focus and study hard to prepare for their test later in the day. The test was tough, but most of the class did incredibly well! If your child scored less than 80, they are required to take the re-test, which will be on Tuesday, March 12th during afternoon Homework Club. I was unable to send the tests home with the kids since two people still have not taken it, but I will be sending them home on Monday afternoon. Finally, all outstanding assignments (including Fall assignments) have been updated on a chart that is hung on the door to our classroom. All of the students are aware, and every student has looked the chart over and begun working on what they owe.