Week 3

Weekly Greetings!

The start of school has gone really well over the first full two weeks! The students have settled into routines quickly and we have done some fun activities. Last week in addition to finishing our "Six Keys" books and making a school promise, we made "Muddy Buddies" and wrote thank you letters to give to the forestry people that fought the Long Lake fire. The treats turned out great and it was fun to have something to share when we had our field trip on Friday. The photos to follow are of the two groups making the snack food.

Over the last two weeks, we have also been discussing many important social skills such as kind acts, recognizing bullying, how each one is special, and working together. Each grade group made a puzzle piece sharing what they felt good about doing and put their puzzle together.

We continued to get to know each other better through sharing items brought to school in the "All About Me!" bag I gave to them all. 

On Wednesday, we were able to experience a live presentation from Australia to learn about Tasmanian Devils living in a zoo there. There were 20 groups and 300 students from all over the state that participated.

The kindergarten students are learning their alphabet letter names and sounds using a fun program called Zoo Phonics. They were able to go on an animal hunt to match the Zoo Phonics animal to the letter and sound it matched on Thursday. The kindergarten students found all 26 animals and matched the letters correctly, with some help from the older students.

Friday morning, the rain slowed enough for us to go to the nearby burn area and hear from Ted Morris of the forestry department about the large fire that was fought to protect the village last summer. He shared that at one point, it was the number one priority of all fires in the United States. Every student had a story to tell about the fire and what they saw, and also asked some really good questions.

This will be a short week with there not being any school on Friday. Please remember that there is also no school the following Monday and Tuesday to allow five days with the weekend for hunting. If you would like to order books from the book club order forms I sent home, you can just fill out the order form and send the money in by Thursday so I can get them ordered over the hunting break. Also, I hope to see you all at the Welcome Back Open House on Wednesday from 3:30 to 5pm. Please come and see some of the projects your child has worked on over the last two weeks.

Enjoy the lovely fall colors and kind regards,
Julie Brown