May 30, 2012

Good Morning,
  I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.  I truly enjoyed the time off, the weather, and the activities with my family.  Last week's assembly was wonderful.  The students received a handful of compliments from the staff and parents.  Ms Belknap stopped by to personally congratulate some of her former students.

  I have come to the conclusion that everyone is pretty busy and completing the math homework and/or survey has become quite a challenge.  So, I have made the decision that I will not send home the last game for the year.  I will still be sending home reading each night and would appreciate your help with this.

Field Trip Money:  I still need money from the following.

Ben and Jerry's ($4):  Jonas, Hannah
Shelburne Museum ($5):  Jonas, Azailea, Hannah

*Please send in immediately or let me know if it is an issue.

  I will be out of the classroom from Monday through Thursday of next week.  Sally Utter will be the substitute.  They will be working on their play, spelling, math, and science.  We will not have stations next week, so I will not need the volunteers to come in.  The station time will be used for practicing the play and working on their costumes.  On Monday, I will be in the building and testing kids on their reading ability.  On Tuesday, I will be leaving with the 6th graders as head to Boston with them for their annual trip.

  I hope you have a wonderful week.

Peace,
Tom

May 23, 2012

Good Morning.
  The students did a fantastic job with their song last night.  I hope you enjoyed the performance and captured the enjoyment that your children had with the whole event.  You will hear that song a couple of more times before the year is over.

  Today, we will have stations and reading groups.  If possible, some of the kids will plant some of our seedling sin the garden today.  The students also had music and French classes.  I know they will be practicing their dance in French class.  This afternoon we will continue our science unit on states of matter.

  I have field trip money from everyone except, Hannah, Azailea (just need $5 for Shelburne Museum), Nina, and Jonas.  Remember it is $9 for both trips.

 Our parent volunteers for the Shelburne Museum trip are:  Jeff, Hillary, Erin, Michelle, and Kathy and Elizabeth.  Chaperones are also $5 a piece.

Have a great day.
Peace,
Tom

May 21, 2012

Good Morning,
  I hope you enjoyed the beautiful weekend.  I will not be in school on Monday afternoon.  I am one of the district representatives working on the implementation of the new Common Core in the area of math.  This is the first of five scheduled meetings that I will take part in over the next year.

  We will be back in the garden on Tuesday.  I will have the kids go out during station time with the parent volunteer.  We will rotate groups so, that I can do reading groups as well.  If it nice enough we may do all of our stations out there for that day.  A lot of our garden work will be contingent not he weather. I highly recommend that your child apply sunscreen each day and bring a water bottle.

*  I am still awaiting filed trip money from a few people.  Please send it in.

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Peace,
Tom

May 18, 2012

Worked in the garden!  Take a look at student captured pictures.  Have a nice weekend.
Peace,
Tom

May 16, 2012

Today we dove deeper into our study of states of matter.  There was a lot of excitement in the air with the anticipated use of a beaker and hot plate.  Today's focus was observing a solid transform to a liquid.  The students wrote a hypothesis about the time it would take to transform from a solid to a liquid and at what temperature.  Each student recorded their observations on a table.  We recorded in increments of 2 minutes for 8 minutes.

We will be going to the garden on Friday.  Please have for children dress appropriately and apply sunscreen before school.  Our focus will be to clean and prep our garden bed for planting.

Have a great day.
Tom

Today, Highfields Composting came to our class to introduce a new composting program.  Through a generous grant from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Waitsfield Elementary School is able to participate in a compost collection program, cost-free, for the next year. Most of our scraps are collected through our school lunch program, but classrooms will also be able to reduce trash through composting. Thanks to Sally Utter for really starting the composting work here at W.E.S. several years ago; this is a great way to bring it forward without much work for us.

We did not have reading groups today (we met with Highfields during our reading block), so some of the students chose a book of choice to put in his/her reading bag.  He/She may need you to read their choice to them.


*Please don't forget to send in the $5 for the Shelburne Museum trip and $4 for the Ben & Jerry trip.  Below are the kids that have already paid and the list of parents chaperoning.


Shelburne Museum ($5 for each student and chaperone):  


Chaperones; Michelle Lepp, Jeff Kahn, Elizabeth Cadwell, and Erin Liston.  
Students That Have Paid:  Beckett, Rachel, Lillian, Amy, and Emma


Ben & Jerrys ($4 for the cost of the ice cream cone):  
Chaperones;
Students That Have Paid:  Beckett, Jordan, Rachel, Emery, Lillian, Jordan, Amy, and Emma


Have a great week.
Peace,
Tom

May 11, 2012

Good Morning.  Today we read from two books, one was Ben's Dream and the other was Just a Dream.  Both book were written by Chris Van Allsburg.  After reading each story the students had to make a list of things they learned from the book (including characters, setting, plot, etc.).  They will use this information to write a compare and contrast writing next week.

*Please don't forget to send in money for our field trips and let me know if you are interested in chaperoning.

*We will be presenting at the May 25th assembly.

Have a great weekend.

Peace,
Tom

May 9, 2012

Good Afternoon!  Today we had stations, french and music.  It was a very quick day.  Please don't forget to send in the field trip money and/or let me know if you would like to participate in the Shelburne Museum trip.  Yesterday, we chose our roles for the June play.

Have a great day.
Tom

May 7, 2012

Good Afternoon,
  I hope everyone read the blog from Friday.  It has a few important dates to remember on it.  There is one more field trip to make note of.  Mr. Hubbard and I are planning a trip to the Shelburne Museum on Monday, June 18th.  We will leave the school around 8:00 and return around 2:00.  The cost is $5 a child.   We are also hoping top get 5-6 parent chaperones from each room.  You could ride the bus up and back (to save on gas).  The cost for each parent is also $5 per person.  If you are interested in going, please let me know.  I would like the money turned in before the end of May.

  The reason we are going to this destination is to connect to our local history theme.  We would like the kids to journal while they are on the trip.  They will focus on how the buildings and houses have changed and/or stayed the same when compared to buildings of today.

Peace,
Tom

Friday, May 4th

Today the students wrote int heir Weekly News Journals.  Please look at them over the weekend and respond.  There should be a lot of entries about our plants.  I have scheduled two dates that I need you to mark on your calendars and/or respond to.

June 12:  We will be meeting our Pen Pals in Waterbury and going to Ben and Jerry's for a tour and ice cream cone.  The cost of the tour is free but we will need $4 per child for ice cream.  If this is a difficulty for anyone, please let Kaiya or I know.  Parents are welcome to join us but will have to pay $2 for the tour and will have to drive themselves (we are using our bus to pick up the Waterbury kids).

June 14:  We will be having an evening event for our class.  It will be a variety of whole group and individual student presentations.  It will be held at the school and start at 6:00.

I hope you have a great weekend.

Peace,
Tom

May 2, 2012

Good Morning,

  Over the last two days, the students have been recording their plant observations in their science journals.  We are reviewing how scientists use diagrams and labels to describe their observations.  Yesterday, we also handed out some of the roles for our May assembly.  I am hoping the assembly will be two weeks from Friday.  This assembly will document how the specialist teachers and I collaborated on the idea of local history (from our Social Studies curriculum).  The assembly will include a narration of our school time-line, a song about Waitsfield School (written by our class), and a French dance.

  I know May can be absolutely crazy.  We have something almost every night of the week for the month, including having to go to Plattsburgh for a soccer game this weekend.  If homework is an issue, take the night off.  Just write on your child's reading log that you needed an evening free of the task.

 I hope you have a great day,

Peace,
Tom