Hello Families!Happy Groundhog Day! It seems Spring will be coming sooner rather than later. Thanks to all of the grownups who were able to join us on our trip last Wednesday - it was a success. We have very sophisticated kids who are able to to talk about art and their ideas - highly impressive! Here is what's happening...FAMILY SING AND FIELD TRIP FRIDAY: We will have a Family Sing first thing in the morning on Friday, 2/7. We just had a big trip but are hoping to make a walking trip to Wild West Playground after our sing. (As of now the forecast says rain but it's a while away.) We would go to play but also to look at the 3D shapes used to create the structures in the playground. When we come back we have a math/fairy tale project planned which requires some found things to be donated from home. We need each family to donate:toilet paper rollspaper towel rollsif you have any - empty shoe boxes, egg cartons, small boxes (no bigger than a shoebox)these are not a found things: decorative sticky jewels, scotch tape and/or decorative tape.We are going to be creating our own individual castles! FAIRY TALE MAGIC: Be sure to ask your child what magical thing has occurred in the classroom after tomorrow...FLU B: Heads up that Flu B has been going around. The flu shot did not cover this strain. If your child has a fever and is lethargic you may want to get a flu test. I'd like to remind everybody that school policy says a child must be fever free for 24 hours before returning to school. Thanks!WE HAVE SWITCHED LUNCH TEACHERS: Along with switching from dance to now art and music, we also have a new lunch teacher for the rest of the year - it is Bernard the art teacher! Lucky kids.STUDENT TEACHER: Starting this Tuesday, Tomoka Masuda will be student teaching in our class on Tuesdays and Thursdays through the beginning of May. WHAT WE ARE UP TO:In phonics we have moved from working with real words to learn word-part power (it, in, an, at) and have started looking at chunks of words (ex: ent, ot, ar) We are learning that if we can figure out and read one word we can read many words!In writing we are going to be working solely on writing convincing letters this week. There is going to be a huge incentive for doing this letter writing - which has to do with the fairy tale magic I wrote about above! In reading we are continuing to build our reading muscles. We will continue to meet in groups to work on specific skills. As a class we are going to be working on checking our reading to make sure what we have read makes sense and sounds right. If not, we stop and try to fix it. Reminder about book baggies - keep the bags at home until you are ready to help your child exchange the books. Kids are progressing quickly so I will be reassessing and changing menus on an ongoing basis. In math we are going to be finishing up our geometry unit with the castle project on Friday. We are also working on understanding and writing double digit numbers. Last week we worked on teen numbers - knowing what each number means (14 means 1 group of 10 and 4 ones.) This week we will continue with 20 - 99. We are also now starting the exciting countdown to the 100th day of school!!! The 100th day will land on Feb. 14th - the day before February vacation. We will be having a day long celebration on the 14th! Stacie will be coming this week to continue teaching us about fairy tales through her song Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover. Also Susan will be coming from Lincoln Center Institute to continue lessons around transformation and the artworks we saw at the Jewish Museum on our trip. We are enjoying Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Charlie found the last golden ticket! I've read this book tons of times and I still get the goosebumps at that part. And really - a lifetime supply of chocolate? What could be better than that?Have a great week!Love, Lynn