Saturday, October 1st: Fall Garden Work Party @ FGCS 1pm-4pm drop-in
It is feeling like fall, and the Backyard Garden needs your help. Join Erin, our garden coordinator, this Saturday to prune, weed and mulch the garden. All ages and skills welcome. There will be tools, gloves and snacks provided. Bring your own water bottle or favorite pruners!
The Backyard Garden is on Main Street, just south of 19th. Parking is available across the street. Email Erin, e.morgan@fgcschool, if you are able to bring a hedge trimmer or a pick-up truck to haul away green waste.
Here's a tip for your home garden! Clean Water Services is giving away 5 free native plants to Washington County residents this fall. Native plants benefit wildlife and often require less watering. Check out this year's giveaway event.
Monday, October 10th: Puffins to Forest Grove Public Library 2pm-3pm
Chaperones Welcome! If you would like to join us, please send your kiddo's teacher an email.
Friday, October 14th
Staff Development- NO SCHOOL for students
Friday, October 21st
Grading & Staff Development- NO SCHOOL for students
Thursday, Oct. 27th and Friday, Oct. 28th
Fall Parent Conferences- NO SCHOOL for students
A Note about Birthday Party Invitations at School:
Students are welcome to bring in paper invitations ONLY if they are inviting their entire class. We ask that families please make their own arrangements outside of school if only a few select students will be invited to a party. The FGCS family directory will be available mid-October, and you can contact Karen Torry with any questions about the directory. We appreciate your understanding.
Math Homework
For the week of Oct 3rd- 7th, focus on these Apply homework pages:
For all 3rd and 4th graders:
You can finish up any pages from last week, and begin work on lessons 11- 14
Also recommended: daily practice with multiplication facts for 2-10's
Check out these multiplication fact practice apps:
What's happening in the Puffin Nest:
Language Arts Workshop
During Reading Workshop we focused on making "Text to Self "connections. What is a text-to-self connection? Students thought about how when you read something, it often reminds you about something you've seen or done in your own life. Making this type of connection increases our understanding and helps us stay more engaged. This week, when your kiddo is reading at home, try asking them to share a text-to-self connection from their book.
What is Personal Narrative Writing?
Narrative writing tells a personal story about you!
• It has a beginning, middle, and ending
• It has characters, setting, and shares the action of a small moment story
• It hooks the reader and has a personal voice with heart
We begin our work by gathering a collection of ideas and personal stories. During our writing workshop this week, students stretched their memories and writing muscles as they worked on short personal narratives based on a chosen prompt.
You can support your kiddo by sharing family stories at home!
"I remember the time when..."
Demonstrate oral storytelling by telling your kiddo stories from your younger years, as well as stories about them as little ones. Prompt your kiddo to think up personal stories from the last few years of their lives that they can recall and describe in detail!
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
In our morning classroom community meetings, we engaged with read-alouds and group discussion to consider the important self-management SEL skill and positive character trait of DILIGENCE. Here's what we learned:
- diligence means doing hard things with an "I will try my best" attitude
- It can create the positive feeling of being trusted and responsible
- doing things with care and precision can lead to a special kind of personal satisfaction
Out & About & Science
This week in class, we turned our animal unit attention to trait variation. Students learned:
- Inherited traits are your physical characteristics, like your hair or eye color. Most traits are passed down from parents, however, they can also come from your grandparents or even your great-grandparents.
- Variation of traits among individuals may provide advantages in surviving. For example, camouflage is a trait that helps animals survive. Other traits, such as fur color, speed, and how well an animal can hear also help it survive.
- Traits can also be learned (behaviors taught by parents) and influenced by the environment (example: a sunflower with stunted growth due to lack of water).
From our Out & About lessons, students have become experts at identifying the physical and behavioral adaptations that might help an organism survive. But, how did the oak tree or honey bee come to have these adaptations in the first place? On this week's Out & About to the garden, we used our powers of observation to explore how variation of traits between one creature and the next can actually cause a species to change over time.