I sent the children home with full backpacks today. I hope everyone who needed their shoes packed them, and that you aren't missing too many outdoor clothes. We all checked the lost and found, and we made a solid effort to find owners for the left-over neck-warmers and gloves this afternoon. I must thank the students for their very helpful work getting the class tidied up so that we are leaving it ready for the caretakers, and ready to come back to. Everyone was committed to the job they had and fully deserve their Bravo!
I have sent home our beautiful hearts with the shadow effect, our 3-D season from way back, and a print that we just made today. This was our first attempt at print-making, and they all turned out SO well. We'll do another big one after the break. Thanks for all the styrofoam meat trays - this is what we used them for! Ask your artist how they planned their print, carved it into the styrofoam and then made the print! Later I'll send home the styrofoam stencils themselves and they can be reused. In the meantime, it's an easy project to do at home!
If you're looking for things to work on over the break, I have 4 good ideas. Take them or leave them:
1. I thought it would be super fun to do something with the amazing puppets we made with Donnely. I have adapted 3 well-known fairy tales to suit our characters, and each student has a role in one. Ideally each student will memorize his/her lines so that we can focus on the puppets and our acting later. I did something similar last year, so I know that we will be able to do it! When you see the script, the thought of your child being able to read and memorize all those words may seem next to impossible, but remember that they just got it today and have read through it only once, with a lot of help. Our reading buddies will do most of the work with us, so this is NOT expected to be done over the break, but I know some students are really excited to get started, so this is one thing you can do. Long car rides are great for this!
* Please remind your actor to take very good care of their script and bring it to school right away after the break!
2. READ READ READ! I encouraged everyone to take some books home today, but the library is a great resource as well. Please attempt to maintain the same reading routine that you have established, just like brushing your teeth. Taking a week off from working with French sounds would not be the best thing ever...
* Please remind your reader to return all of their borrowed books right after the break!
3. Keep a vacation journal! Remember when I said I was going to encourage the writers to come up with their own things to say? Well, good news, they've been doing it! And it hasn't been as hard as I was imagining. Maybe they can write something every evening about what they did. I'd love to see this after the break - even if it's not in French.
4. Finally, we will be continuing our adding and subtracting work after the break. I've been loving the strategies the mathematicians have been inventing, and it's been great to see others drawing on the strategies we've shared and using them successfully. Some of them are quite complex for grade 1 - there's absolutely nothing wrong with drawing a picture, using blocks or some kind of counter to help with addition and subtraction at this stage - in fact it's highly encouraged! Over the break, you could give your mathematician the occasional math problem and a blank piece of paper and let them go to town. For example, Today we are going to drive for 2 hours to get to the ski hill, then we'll drive 2 hours to get home. Tomorrow we will drive 3 hours to get to grandma's. How many hours will we spend in the car today and tomorrow?
Most importantly, have a fun and relaxing week!
See you soon,
Mlle Mitchell