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Sister Team Fun:
Working Together and Getting To Know Each Other

Our class has been working with Ms. Deforge's class on an e-mailing project. Each child had an e-mail buddy from the other class to e-mail back and forth with. The day before the December break, our two classes met to complete a "Wreath of Peace" project together and to visit with our buddies. In the above video, kids are helping each other trace the hands that went into the center of the "Wreaths of Peace." In the video below, kids share some of their thoughts about the project and being e-mail buddies.

Check This Out!

Before vacation we wrapped up our unit on magnets. Kids learned a lot about how magnets work. To prepare for this video, we brainstormed a list of 20 things that we knew about magnets. Then each child picked one thing to share in the video. This our first attempt at creating a Flip Camera movie. Enjoy!

What's New?!

We wrapped up our unit on sound by having kids demonstrate their understanding of how the experiments that we did showed that all sounds are caused by vibration. We've now moved on to a study of magnets. Kids have been doing a lot of hands-on exploration with many different kinds of magnets. We have some super scientists in our class!

In writing, we concluded our unit on revision and have moved into a study of paragraph structure. Our young writers are learning how to write topic sentences and support these sentences with proof sentences.

Vista 1st and 2nd grade readers are currently studying story elements. Characters, setting, movement through time, and problem and solution are the elements that we have been focusing on. I have been really impressed by the progress that the kids have made in reading so far this year.

Upcoming Events

During the month of December, we will be celebrating the season with a Winter Party on December 23rd. The wiki worked so well for signing up for the harvest party that I thought we'd try it again. Click on the link below to sign up for a contribution. You will need to start an account in order to edit the wiki if you don't already have one from last time. Let me know if you have questions. Thank you!
http://bianchiwinterparty.pbwiki.com/

Students and adults at Allen Brook School are currently participating in a Food Drive for the Williston Food Shelf. If you can send in a non-perishable food item this week we would appreciate it. In Vista we're keeping track of our donations by making a wreath out of paper hands. The wreath has been growing but still needs some more hands to be complete. Thank you!

Later this week, children will be participating in workshops that will help them to learn about how different countries and cultures celebrate winter holidays. We'll also be working on a special project with our buddies in Ms. Deforge's class before the break.

What's New?!

Greetings to all parents....
If you're like me, you're wondering where the time has gone lately. Time has flown by since I had the pleasure of meeting with all of the families in our class during parent-teacher conferences. It was really great to be able to spend time talking with you about the strengths of your children and the goals that we all have for them as the school year continues. Thanks for taking the time to come to meet with me. Remember that I am only an e-mail or phone call away if you have questions or concerns. Parent-teacher conferences are scheduled twice per school year but can be scheduled whenever we need to meet. Thanks! Caitlin