OLDER CLASS:
At the end of the day last Friday my class watched an Eyewitness Video on the Tropical Forests with the younger class and then Rebekah read to them from The Hobbit. She remarked how difficult the language structure of The Hobbit was so on Tuesday I told the students who have been reading it aloud in class that I even appreciated more the fact that they were doing such a good job. We are now almost halfway through this book.
On Monday we had our second New York trip and we all had a great time despite the weather. Thank you to Fran, John, Xinyu, and Sara for being chaperones. The students in my group at the museum picked a few paintings that we want to present to the class as ideas for group wall murals. Everyone on the trip was very conscientious about looking for animals in paintings and writing in their notebooks. After our break we will look at some of this work online and decide about our wall mural. The themes of our next two trips will be: 1) A tour of subway art. The arts council has been installing art in the subway for years and we will be riding the train from station to station seeing as much of it as we can. (We will also view a PBS program on Subway Art before this trip) We will be surfacing from the underground to visit Little Italy and Chinatown. We will have dinner at a Chinese restaurant. 2) A tour of the Brooklyn Museum and a walk through Brooklyn and across the Brooklyn Bridge. Our restaurant will be an old favorite of mine, Mullane’s Bar and Grill which is an Irish Pub type restaurant. Our last trip is open ended at this point.
On Tuesday, I had my second parent meeting in the series which nicely fits under the TNS philosophy which started off last week’s bulletin – “We are committed to educating the whole child by placing equal focus on social, emotional and intellectual growth and development.” The second meeting was on social development and our last meeting will be on emotional and physical development.
This week we started our new ecosystem which is Fresh Waters. We read from Earth Matters and had J presenting freshwater fish and K presenting ducks. Our work on vocabulary continues with the students taking an active interest in the words and the writing that they are doing using these words. We are really enjoying hearing everyone’s work. We also made time for the reading of New York Trip writings.
This is the last week we are actively working on the pages for the magazine project. Students who are not finished or who wish to do more work should do that during the break. We will be putting this work into magazine form when we return after the break.
Our regular work on the schedule continued with math workbooks, etc. Also thank you to five students who took over the entire project this week of reading with the younger class.
Joyce will be coming in on Friday to talk with us again about Uganda and Rwanda. Cooking with Sara to start after the break! See note from her below…
A NOTE FROM SARA ABOUT OLDER CLASS COOKING:
Eight sessions of Older Class cooking will begin on Friday, March 1. This year our focus will be on (relatively) healthy snacks and simple meals made from scratch, and most of the foods were suggested by the class. We’ll divide the class randomly into four groups of four students, and each group will have two opportunities to prepare food for the entire class.
We’ll be making deviled eggs; homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches; hummus with pita bread and a veggie platter; meringues and fruit salad; pasta sauce and baked ziti; pancakes and scrambled eggs; spanikopita (spinach and cheese pie); and will finish up with nachos and quesadillas.
All foods will be ovo-lacto vegetarian. Parents,please contact me if you want to share information about food allergy or food sensitivity issues.
MIDDLE CLASS:
The middle class had a busy and productive day today which included a great time exchanging valentines. I hope everyone enjoys the break next week.
YOUNGER CLASS:
I can safely say we have had one of the most productive weeks so far this year at school. My class have taken this Friday’s deadline for the Predator project very seriously and have worked so hard each day to finish all of the pieces of the project. I love the art they have created for their animal’s food chain, the stories they have written, and the amazing facts they have researched. I want to encourage parents to make some time after February break to stop in and check out these amazing projects. We also had a great time making Valentine’s Day boxes, giving and receiving Valentine’s, working on journals, math, and music. I have also been meeting one-on-one with members of my class to work on their self-evaluations. Tomorrow we are really excited to be going to Brookdale to see Amazing Grace, a play about racial equality in school. We also celebrated R’s 8th Birthday.
After break we will begin our next project on animal habitats. If you have any interesting books, etc… please feel free to send them in.
MUSIC WITH HELEN:
Younger Class — Music was held in Opera form today. There was no speaking, only singing. We talked (sang) about the differences in music sounds, and the feelings you can have from different kinds of music. We were also lucky to have a special guest in our class today, Rockin’ Ron! In our next session we’ll begin learning songs from our upcoming presentation of The Three Little Pigs.
Middle Class — The last two weeks were spent listening to music. We heard selections by Ravel, Handel, Brahms and others. Some of the music was written to promote imagery like water falls or fireworks and the class made drawing and haiku to match the sounds they heard. Thank you to Victor for photographing each drawing and making a slide show that is available on the Middle Class iPad 2.
Older Class — Last week we had a short session in which we brainstormed some of the things we could do for the end of the year project. One of the items on the list was to play some of the music for the younger class’s musical. Since we have a variety of skills and tools, we will be working on bringing the elements together for a musical halftime show of our own.