Friday, October 8th: NO SCHOOL for students
Professional Development/Grading Day
Friday, October 15th NO SCHOOL for students
Professional Development/Grading Day
Thursday, October 21st: NO SCHOOL for students
Student Conferences
Friday, October 22nd: NO SCHOOL for students
Student Conferences
2021-22 School Year Calendar
A huge thank you to everyone who donated snacks!
A note on umbrellas and items from home:
For level 1 & 2, our approach has been that kiddos may bring them out to recess if they are using them safely (not running, being careful so they don't poke kids, not turning them into swords, etc). Small umbrellas that can be stored inside backpacks work best.
Please note:
For safety reasons, students will not use umbrellas when in line, or going to PE.
Please check your kiddos backpack: We ask that students leave special items (toys/Pokemon cards, etc) at home.
What’s happening in the Puffin Nest?
Project: Storypath: “Early Northwest Coast People”
This week, we considered the mural that students created for our Storypath setting, and thought about the resources available to the people who lived in the Pacific Northwest coast environment in the years before the spread of technology, railroads, or industry. These questions guided our discussion:
- What would people need to survive in the environment you made? What natural resources are plentiful in this environment?
- How would people in this environment get what they need to survive in this period before there were stores? What skills might be needed for living in this environment?
- What natural resources would be used for food, clothing and shelter?
This week, we used our mural setting as inspiration to write sense poems. During our Out & About in the backyard garden, students painted their sense poems. They also completed a page in their field notebooks. Our students showed excellent scholarship as they focused attention on a nature sketch, wrote weather observations and added their questions about the natural world.
Classroom Library "Book Tasting"
During our reading workshop, we celebrated reading with a “book tasting” event. Our classroom was transformed into a “book restaurant” and the kids had the opportunity to discover reading treasures amongst the many choices available to them in our classroom library. During the book tasting experience, students learned more about different reading genres, looked for “good-fit” books, and made a list of books they may want to read during the year. We are ready to let our reading lives bloom in Level 2!
What we're learning in science this week
This week your child created a working model of a human eye! Using that model, we discovered the basics of how our eyes work, and figured out some of the causes of vision problems.
One thing you can do to support your child’s curiosity about this topic is to have a discussion about any family members or friends who wear eyeglasses (or contact lenses). In our lesson, we learned about why some people have blurry vision, but we did not discuss how some people have better near-vision (nearsightedness) while other people have better far-vision (farsightedness). This would make a great dinner table discussion!