Sept. 24, 2010

Sept. 24, 2010

Dear Parents,

Good bye, Summer, and Welcome, Fall! The highlight of this week was our trip to Shelburne Farms. We learned how to make bread, we learned how to make cheese (while we chanted about Little Miss Muffet). We learned how to prepare sauce and toppings from the plants of the garden. Then, we rolled out the dough, spread the ingredients, popped our pizzas in the oven, and Yum Yum!

If any of you haven’t been to Shelburne Farms yet, you have to go. It’s an amazing place with cheerful, smart, kind staff people. They helped us pick up chickens, feed pigs, and milk a cow. They taught us about Reduce – Reuse – Recycle (and were very impressed that we already compost our cafeteria food waste at school). We sang songs and played lots of games. What a day! Your children wrote about their day at Shelburne farms, and a copy of their writing pieces are in the Friday Folder today.

In Math, the 1st and 2nd graders are both working with patterns. We think we have figured out the September pattern on our bulletin boards. We’ll know for sure in a couple of days.

In Reading, we finished our Read-aloud book, Sable, by Vermont author, Karen Hesse. What excellent writing! It’s a story about a Vermont girl who is dying to get a dog of her own when a stray appears on her doorstep. We won’t tell you what happens. You’ll have to read it yourself – but we loved it. Also in reading, we are just about finished with our beginning-of-the-year reading assessments. We will begin book groups as soon as we’ve had a chance to get a good, solid look at the data.

Yesterday and Today -- dried apples: we used a crank apple peeler today to peel, core, and slice apples. Then we put the apples in a dehydrator to make dried apple snacks.

Thank you, those of you who were able to make the open house – and thanks for your nice notes to your kids. We read them today. It was great to meet the parents behind these kids. If you weren’t able to make it, stop in and introduce yourself, and see the work your child has done --- the Hopes and Dreams dolls, the self-portraits, the Horizon flags, and the Math Art. If you weren’t able to make it, I have included in this Friday Folder a Horizon Parent Handbook, and your child’s “desk letter” to you. Please write something on the right hand side, and send it back for us to display. The kids stuffed their own Friday Folders today as a way of practicing listening skills. If you are missing any of the above pieces of paper, email me, and I'll look under the desks.

Overall, this group is settling in nicely. Lots of smiles! The kids have learned the schedule, the routines the expectations, and all the names of the many grown-ups who comprise our Horizon House. They now have a solid foundation as we begin to pick up the speed with the academics.

Other notes:

We collected and sorted insects in our Four Winds class today. We found a HUGE spider, but it wasn't poisonous.

Don’t forget our field trip the week after next to the Flynn Theater. Send in permission slips if you haven’t already.

We learned how to use an apple corer and we dried apples for a healthy snack today!
It’s a great time for apple picking – and a bag of apples is fun to sort – in a bunch of ways.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mr. Bolger