Thanks for A Great Year!

Despite the somewhat crazy end to our school year - from the rained-out Rain Garden to the Swine Flu closure - it really was a great year.
Thanks to all of you for helping our class to grow and learn throughout the 2008-09 school year!

How Does Your Garden Grow

Here's a short scrapbook of our Vista Musical - How Does Your Garden Grow. Click on the arrow in the bottom right hand corner to turn the pages.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Upcoming Events

We have a lot going on during the last week of school. Please be sure to check your e-mail for details and reminders this week.

Here are the main events for each day:
Monday - Fun Day at WCS
Tuesday - Rain Garden Project and Class Summer Birthdays Celebration
Wednesday - Four Winds - Sun Power
Thursday - Vista House 4th Grade Graduation followed by our Vista House Picnic at Maple Street Park
Friday - Last Day of School

Shelburne Museum Field Trip - A Huge Success

We had a great time and learned a lot at our Shelburne Museum Field Trip this past Monday. In addition to exploring the "collections" of Electra Webb that we had read about prior to going, kids were able to get a glimpse into the past. The Ticonderoga and the motorcycle exhibit seemed to be the favorites of the group that I went with. Thanks to all who were able to chaperone. Below is a slide show of some of the cool places we were able to experience at the Shelburne Museum!

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Many Thanks!

I just wanted to say thank you for all of the great gifts and kind words that were given during Teacher Appreciation Week a few weeks ago. I really appreciate it!

I also want to thank everyone for helping with and attending the musical. We were all very pleased with how things turned out. The kids did a super job!

Thank you also for all of the support that you have provided for me and your children this year. I can't believe how fast the year has gone!

Fondly,
Caitlin

Upcoming Events - Vista Musical

Vista's musical is in the works. The kids have been excitedly practicing their lines and songs. I wanted to share some details with you.
1. All Vista students participate in the musical. This year's musical entitled How Does Your Garden Grow will be performed on May 28th. We will have a performance during the school day at around 1:00 and another performance in the evening at 6:30.
2. The performances will be held in the Allen Brook gym. Students are asked to come to their classrooms at 6:15 on the night of the performance.
3. We try to keep our costumes fun and relatively simple. Some of the costume elements will be purchased by the team, some borrowed, and some created. For our class, the children playing bunnies will be wearing white, those playing frogs will be wearing green, those playing butterflies will wear a color that will coordinate with their wings, and those playing flowers will wear green. T-shirts (turned inside out) work great. If your child does not have the color he/she needs and can't borrow something, let me know and we can make a workable plan.
4. Last week, lyrics for the songs were sent home in Monday folders. Today, I sent home a copy of each child's lines. Our class will be performing Scene 2 and will also participate in singing throughout the production. Please feel free to help your child practice lines (although most kids are pretty set) and song lyrics at home.

What's New?!

We have finally wrapped up our units on Mexico and Italy. In addition to the Festa Fiesta pictured in the slideshow in the next post, there were many other exciting elements of these units. While we were studying Mexico, each child made a "codex" documenting through pictures the things that we learned about. Other highlights included a presentation by Karla, the au pair of the Crookes Family, and a presentation by Tommy and Beckett from Ms. Rogers' class. Karla is from Mexico and was able to share first hand information with the kids in addition to teaching them some songs and words in Spanish. Tommy and Beckett did a fantastic job sharing a PowerPoint that they had created about Mexico. We all really learned a lot about these two cultures. Our current unit which is already underway is on plants.

Festa Fiesta

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Before the break we had a wonderful celebration as a culmination to our studies of Italy and Mexico. We called it the Festa Fiesta (Festa = party in Italian and Fiesta = party in Spanish). The kids and adults enjoyed sampling some foods from each country. Special thanks goes out to JoAnn Mogielnicki for helping the day of the party and bringing tortellini and sauce. I'd also like to thank the following other families for contributing supplies to the celebration: the Crookes Family, the Wickart/Clarks, the Knudsons, the Martins, the Scheers, and the Kolibas Family. What a fun way to end our studies of these two contrasting cultures!

Upcoming Events

***As I mentioned in my e-mail last week, parent-teacher conferences are coming up in April. If you haven't already done so, please use the wiki to sign up for a time. The link is below. Let me know if you need help!

http://vistaspringparentconferences.pbwiki.com/

***Allen Brook Theme Week is coming up the week of April 13th. Our theme this year is “Sailing Back in Time: Celebrating Vermont’s History.” We are looking for parent volunteers to help with the activities. There will be opening and closing whole school events as well as 2 student workshops during which children travel to other houses to work in mixed groups. Please contact me if you think you may be available to help in any way. Sarah Forbes has already agreed to serve as a Vista parent member of the committee. Thanks, Sarah!

In addition, if you or someone you know/know of has any interest in presenting to students we would also love to hear from you by Monday, March 23rd. The two student workshops are scheduled for Wednesday, April 15, and Thursday, April 16. Each workshop is scheduled to be 90 minutes long. Some possible topics: colonial arts and crafts, storytelling, traditional farming, Lake Champlain.

What's New

As most of you know, we have been studying Italy! Below is an article about our studies that our class wrote together for the upcoming edition of the Blue and Gold newspaper. Also check out the two related photos in our class photo gallery.

“Ciao I Nostri Amici!”
By Mrs. Bianchi’s Class

“Ciao I Nostri Amici!” That means “Hello our friends!” in Italian. We have been learning about Italy and how to speak Italian during our Italy Unit. Some other words we have learned to say are, “Buongiorno” (Good morning) and “Arrivederci” (Goodbye). We’ve learned about many things, including, homes, travel, food, and how people look and dress in Italy.
We started our unit by reading a real postcard sent to us from Florence, Italy from a friend of our student teacher, Ms. Troisi. We began studying what places in Italy look like by drawing what we thought it might look like there based on the description in our postcard. Then we saw a spectacular PowerPoint with lots of information about different places in Italy. Recently, we looked on the computer for real photographs of places in Italy that we could write about. Florence, Venice, and Rome are some of the cities we have studied. Florence has a big church in the city-center. This famous church is called the Duomo. We also learned about Venice. Venice is a unique city that floats on the water. Rome is a large city and it is the capital of Italy. The famous Colosseum is located there. There are some cool places in Italy!
In our unit we also talked about the types of food they eat in Italy. Pasta is a very popular dish and it is usually eaten first and the salad is eaten last! For dessert they like to eat gelato. Gelato is an Italian word for ice cream.
Before our Italy Unit is over we will have also made Venetian Masks, eaten an Italian feast, and created a class question and answer book about Italy. Learning about Italy has been Bellissimo (splendid)!

Kid Quotes and Cool Cat Awards

We have a new way to recognize super classroom behavior. Cool Cat awards are awarded throughout the week. They are given for a variety of reasons including: going out of your way to help a classmate, accomplishing a task that is hard for you, doing something to benefit your classmates, and displaying honorable qualities such as being flexible and thoughtful. See the comments the kids posted to learn more!

Upcoming Events

Valentine's Day is just around the corner! We started making valentines on Friday that we will be sending to the residents of Whitney Hill senior housing here in Williston. A big thanks goes out the Ballard Family for sending in awesome card making supplies for us!

Children who would like to bring in homemade or store bought valentine cards are welcome to do so. I do ask that if your child would like to bring cards that he/she bring in one for each child in our class. Also, I will send home a list of first names via e-mail or hard copy. If you do not want your child's name on the list, please let me know by Wednesday, February 4.

Given the half day, we will be having a Valentine's Day brunch on Friday, February 13. Please sign up using the wiki if you would like to send in a donation for the celebration. The link is below. Thanks!
http://bianchivalentinesbrunch.pbwiki.com/Valentine%27s-Day-Brunch

Inauguration Festivities

ABS students recognized and celebrated Inauguration Day with a variety of activities throughout the afternoon. Vista students gathered in the kiva to watch the inauguration on the big screen. Thanks to some generous donations from Vista families, kids enjoyed festive snacks while watching the ceremony. Our class also had a delicious cake brought in by the Akeys and did some inauguration activities in the classroom. Enjoy these glimpses into Vista's Inauguration Day!

Greetings from the Technology Conference!

Hi everyone -

I hope you had a good Thursday and Friday! Ms. Rogers and I have been having a super time at the FETC conference. We have learned a lot and have many good ideas about how to share what we've learned with the students and teachers of Allen Brook School.

I thought you might enjoy checking out a few websites that I learned about. Try these links and tell me what you think by posting a comment or telling me when I get back on Monday.

1. This site allows you to draw using a variety of tools. The cool thing is that if you click replay after you draw, you can see the movements that happened while you created your picture. You can watch the introduction or skip it when you first get to the site and then choose a tool and start drawing.
http://www.imaginationcubed.com/

2. This site called vozMe will allow you to type in words and then will read them aloud to you. Once you've typed your message, you choose a voice and then click "create mp3" and you will be able to hear the words.
http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en

I'm really glad I was able to come to this conference but am looking forward to being back in the classroom on Monday. See you soon.

Mrs. Bianchi

Meet Ms. Troisi

Ms. Troisi is our student teacher from Champlain College. She will be working with us every day until the end of April. Welcome, Ms. Troisi we're glad you're here.

What's New?!

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