March 24, 2011
Dear RiverRun Families,
This week we spent time making a good-bye present for Mary Kaye. The children wrote very beautiful and touching words to her. We will send a copy of your child's work home for you to read. A copy of the complete work from all the children is in our classroom; if you have a chance please take time to read it. Mary Kaye will be missed.
This week I started to talk about Canada. We will be studying Canada, Central, and South America for the remainder of the year. Next week we will continue this unit of study. We will look at the plants and animals native to Canada and learn about the Providences and territories.
Nancy and I have been discussing our cooking program. We both agree that this is an important part of fostering independence and want to continue making a meal each month. We are finding the need to prep for 25-30 people each month challenging. When we have guests come to our home, we make preparations that we may choose not to make, if we were just cooking for our family. These preparations can be time consuming. We are planning to simplify a bit and have the children cook/prepare for some meals just for the class and we will not have it be a community event each month. On occasion during the school year we will invite the whole community as this gives us an opportunity to practice grace and courtesy. We would like to continue to have a parent volunteer assist us if there is interest. Feedback on this idea is welcome.
Enjoy your long weekend,
Amy
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This week the students learned more about insects and Integrated Pest Management (an alternative to the use of poisonous chemicals in gardening) as we worked on a simple play with this subject. The students all choose different roles in the play (many share a role) and have been practicing reading their lines. Some have even memorized their lines. Several came up with the idea of making costumes for their characters so we spent our art time this week creating costumes. We had a short week, so we have more work to do on this and then next week they may actual practice their lines with actions. They're really enjoying this activity.
We also practiced with our recorders again on Wednesday and by student request, they were allowed to take them home for further exploration and practice during these four days away from school. Please remind your child to bring both the recorder and the music book back to school on Monday.
Next week I'll begin reading the book “Alice in Wonderland” during Read Aloud time. I hope to get through the entire book before our early May field trip to see the New York Theatre Ballet's performance on this same theme. If you happen to have this book at home and your child would like to bring it in, that would be helpful as some students enjoy reading along and the more copies we have, the better. We'll return them after we finish reading the book.
Best wishes,
Nancy
Upcoming Dates:
March 30th, 31st, and April 1st – RiverRun Upper Elementary Preview Program
April 14th – RiverRun Potluck Dinner and Woodcock Watch at Pine Bush Discovery Center
April 18th - 22nd – No School – Spring Recess
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