It’s been an interesting week here recuperating from my hip replacement surgery.  Everyone had ideas of how I would “fill my time” and were helpful with suggestions…books to read, shows to watch, etc.  Let me tell you “finding time” is the problem not “filling time”  and as with all of life’s experiences, I am never ceased to be amazed at the rich tapestry of people and new skills that surface every day.  First the people:  I have met a WWII bombardier, now almost 90, who was stationed in England close to where my husband Mick’s family came from, an Egyptian Coptic Christian who came to America for asylum in the early 90’s and works in the kitchen here, an amazing 96 year old African American (my roommate for the first 3 days) who has worked with a wide variety of civil rights activists, and a woman from Haiti whose family had a large estate and servants who grew up speaking 4 languages who now works as a nurse’s aide—to mention but a few!

I have learned to use hospital equipment I never used before, to work 2 hours a day at physical therapy, to forget all vestige of modesty in dealings with medical staff, to realize how many things you can hold in your teeth, to see many sides of human nature, often from the same person within the blink of an eye, and be endlessly patient with everyone about everything but particularly with myself.  I now have immense respect for anyone who uses a wheelchair on a regular basis.  It’s very hard work and needs tremendous upper body strength and whenever I feel frustrated with myself (which is hourly!) I seem to meet someone 10 times worse off.  Thank you to everyone who has called, sent flowers, cards or prayers—all much appreciated.  I have kept in touch with school staff and enjoyed hearing the daily happenings.  The food here is great and I have put on 6 pounds since I arrived!  The nurse assures me it’s fluid retention from the surgery (or the fact that they weighed me immediately after I ate dinner).

I’ll be going home on Saturday and I look forward to seeing everyone at the Open House on January 26^th!

Click here to download the flyer

It was great having the day in school on Monday, seeing all the kids after the break and having a little time with each class. We had a good staff meeting Monday after school and made general plans for the time up to the February break which includes some conference report writing and self evaluations, as well as preparation for the January 26^th open house.  Please help with this open house in any way you can.  We need parents to talk to visitors and probably to set up and clean up.  We will need older children to show visitors around and we have also invited graduates.  Mostly we need to advertise the open house.  Please put the flyer (click here to view flyer ) up around your neighborhood.  Stores, gyms, libraries and eating places are excellent venues for these posters.  Also, tell any friends or neighbors who might be interested.  Explain that open house is an excellent introduction to the school and then follow-up visits can be arranged for those interested in seeing the classes in action.

A huge thank you for two generous gifts received from TNS families, one was designated for the scholarship fund and the other amazingly generous donation was for the building fund.

OLDER CLASS:

This Monday, 1/14, I will have the first of three parent meetings. This meeting is going to be on academics, the second (2/12) will be on social development, and the final meeting (3/14) will be on emotional and physical development. All of these factors are very inter-related, but we will be attempting to look at each one separately. Focusing on each of these areas will give us a chance to look at it in depth and to finally give us a more complete picture of how they all work together and how important it is that they are balanced. I like to compare this meeting to a play (actually a set of three plays) where each play focused on a family in a particular room of the house. One play showed the family in the living room, another the kitchen, and the third on the porch. The members of the family would leave the living room and go into the kitchen but one could only know what happened in the kitchen if you went to the second play that focused on that room. I found this series of plays fascinating. Seeing all three plays gave the full picture of the interaction of the family and filled in many more details about their lives. I am hoping that these meetings will do the same for us in discussing some of the things that are important in growth and development.

This week the schedule included continuing work such as math work book, we continued to enjoy J’s fish presentations, N read to us in bookcorner, we did ocean work, we created more life-sized animals, we read a mini play and article from Scope Magazine, and wrote in our journals. New work included a project by L on The Wackiest White House Pets, we had a talk by Joyce, a TNS parent, on her two week trip to Uganda and Rwanda topped off with the opportunity to eat a fried grasshopper. Finally we focused Thursday on working on the new self-evaluation sheets and placing work on the walls and in the writing drawers. We are hoping to work on puppet plays on Friday. It was a good four days and everyone was glad to be back, however we did miss having E and K in the class who were out sick.

MIDDLE CLASS:

We are finishing up our bird project and will be moving on to animal classification systems. The children and I will be brainstorming ideas for a project based on animals other than birds. The children want to continue some connection with the bird project so we will be doing a few mini activities such as making natural bird feeders.

Our apps of the week are focusing on spelling. Spelling City and Spelling Magic levels 2 and 3 are just two that we are previewing. The children will be evaluating which ones work best for the variety of learning levels we need.

Individual children, especially 3rd years, will be continuing projects from last year including NXT and Wolf Quest. I will be meeting with individual students in preparation for upcoming conferences.

Middle Class Trip to Poricy Park, for “Feathers, Beaks and Claws” Program. We’ll take a look at birds and their adaptations, with particular focus on owls. An outdoor search for bird habitats is followed by a dissection of an owl pellet. Please note the following important items:

• Students will wear gloves to dissect owl pellets which may contain animal fur. Please let me know of any allergy concerns you have with regard to your child.
• Each student needs a brown bag snack so they can take it with them on the trip. We will return to school by lunch so you can send them with a regular lunch separate from their snack.
• We will not be taking the bus for this trip so I will need some parents to drive. We will leave at the start of the school day and return to school by 12:30. If you are available to drive, please email Jill and let her know how many students you can fit in the back seat of your vehicle.

YOUNGER CLASS:

It has been a wonderful return to school after the holidays. Everyone in my class has come back happy, healthy, and ready to work. We began the week by journaling about the vacation and then we began our new project on predators. Everyone in my class has picked a predator to research. We will be writing research papers and creative stories, creating life-sized murals, learning about predator prey food chains and creating mobiles to show how they work. The predators range from a bat to a lion, including two types of eagles, a honey badger, a clouded leopard, and a hedgehog. Kim pulled a lot of books from the library and we have already completed a lot of research. They have also started art work and some creative writing. This project will last until February break. We are also working on an issue of the Little Class Newspaper, everyone has selected an article to write, Big E is leading the newspaper, since it was his request to be an editor that started our work on the issue. Little E will be helping as an assistant Editor. Kim will also be starting Spanish lessons next week. We will be learning phrases connected to the predator project as well as the newspaper. I am really excited to start this language process.

Please make sure your child has a weather appropriate change of clothes, including socks, in their locker at all times.

OLDER CLASS:
It seems to only take a few days for the class to establish their identity and to feel like they have been together for months. It is amazing to watch this happen every year and see the new mix of people blend together to form this new social unit.  From everything I have read recently about education, we are right on track in so many ways.  On the Tuesday before school started I went to a book reading and signing at the Barnes and Noble on the Westside.  A talk was given by Paul Tough, a former editor of the Times Magazine, and his new book is called How Children Succeed. He was also quoted in a recent article in The New York Times written by Joe Nocera. Tough argues that simply teaching cognitive skills isn’t enough and that non-cognitive skills like character are very important. He listed the traits of grit (what a great word), self-discipline, zest, self-control, curiosity, optimism, and being able to communicate and connect with people as some of the important character traits to develop. To this New York crowd, he emphasized that being concerned with only test scores and not taking into account these character traits was limiting the positive impact that education should have on their children – what an affirming thing to hear.

Everyone in the class seems to be getting along with each other and they are all involved in work. I always start off the new year by giving out daily schedules and having the class work on specific assignments at the same time. This gives everyone a base to start to build working and social connections with each other. I am really excited about all of the work that we have done so far, but I am especially enjoying the student’s work on my Grimm’s Fairy Tale Project. This project has evolved into one in which so many skills and organizational concepts are covered. To begin this work I am using 12 illustrated frames that a former TNS student did for me inspired by an actual fairy tale. I have miniaturized his illustrations and given a copy to each of the students in my class. They are coloring in the frame and deciding from what they see what the story line should be under each drawing. When everyone has finished coloring in and writing about each of these twelve frames, I will have them share their work with the class. We will then hear why the artist created each of the illustrations for this fairy tale, and then finally read the actual fairy tale together. The project has one more piece in which each student will select their own animal fairy tale, illustrate it in twelve frames and write their condensed version of the story under each picture. This part of the project will end with each student presenting their work and then reading the actual fairy tale to the class. This project has grown as I have worked on it and has been so enhanced by having our graduate share his talents with us and the marvelous idea of having the students write their story under his drawings. This structured work based on his pictures gives each student a substantial grounding in the project before having the task of creating their own fairy tale.

I am just as excited about much of the other work that we have started which I will just list for you now but will talk more about at our first class parent meeting. These other areas of work are math work books, journal writing, reading Scope Magazine together, many dog related projects ranging from looking at idioms and phrases using the word dog to tracing the development of dogs from wolves. Each student is also doing a dog a day drawing and researching a dog breed of their choice. We have taken some time to get to know the younger class this week by walking with them and then doing a drawing activity. We had phys. ed. on Wednesday and on Friday the older class will conduct buoyancy experiments, determining how much buoyancy each of the different size containers we use on our boats will have and allowing students to calculate the total buoyancy of their finished boats.

MIDDLE CLASS:
We are off to a great start.  Everyone came back to school excited to see friends and to begin work.  We have been focusing on group activities so that everyone becomes comfortable with each other as well as learns the ins and outs of the Middle Class routine.  We have jumped into our first two projects, gardening and birds.  Each child has started to put together a field kit which will include a sketch book and pencil in a soft back pack to which tools will be added as needed such as magnifying glasses, compasses, etc.  We will be taking these on field trips to local parks and wildlife areas to observe, record and study the wildlife and gardens of Monmouth County.  We have a trip planned to Dearborn Farms to see their children’s garden, learn about native plants and photograph and draw what we see.

Meeta and I planned a project on birds over the summer.  Our idea for doing a project on birds was met with enthusiasm and each child has chosen a bird to research and then make a presentation to the class with the objective being to teach other students as much as you can about your bird.  We have been discussing how to identify birds, how to effectively search for information and what forms could be used to make a presentation to the class.

Meeta and I have started to meet with small groups and individuals to get everyone started in a math packet or key curriculum math workbook.  This process will continue over the next week or so until everyone has been assessed and assigned math work.

Chris ran a great Phys Ed session on Wed and today we watched a video on floating and a TNS parent came in to do some exciting experiments on buoyancy.

It is always amazing how much we manage to accomplish in a week.

YOUNGER CLASS: 
We have had a wonderful beginning to the school year! My class are so sweet and eager, getting into everything and enjoying what the classroom has to offer.  We started the week by taking pictures of everyone in the class on the first day of school so we had a record of the very specific outfits chosen for such an important day.  These pictures were then printed and each student added his/her favorite things to be hung on the wall with the picture.  This was a great chance for everyone to get to know each other a little bit.  Today we had a great time with the older class walking at the park.  This was another chance for my class to get to know some of the older classers so that they feel like they have friends in other classes.  We had a great time during the buoyancy workshop we did this morning with a TNS parent.  He does such a great job of making sophisticated concepts so accessible for people of all ages.

I am looking forward to seeing all the parents from my class at my meeting where we will be discussing all the important need-to-know pieces of information for the year.  If you have any questions please call me.