Speeches and December Activities

Yesterday we all had a chance to give our holiday speeches.  We had some children want to be video taped!  We have both pictures and videos of everyone!  After vacation, we have 3 more speeches to hear!

Earlier in the week, we worked with Mrs. Williams' class on a fun project.  We were able to craft while working on following directions.  Here are some pictures of  that activity.

I hope you and your families have a wonderful vacation filled with fun, family and friendship!

Family Crests

As part of our wrap up to our last Interactive Read Aloud of 2012, The Family Under the Bridge, we have been working on creating family crests. Part of our family crests involved coming up with a family motto.  The motto of the family in the book was "We're family, and family sticks together."

Here is a list of our family mottos:

Allen~ Try your best
Brown~Take life slow, and never rush
Cashin~ Never leave each other
Griffith~ Have a strong imagination
Hughes ~Keep your rooms clean and not messy
Kane ~ Never give up
Marsh~ Never give up
Martin~Never give up
Natarajan~ Never worry about your past, always believe in your future
O'Brien ~ Never tease each other
Owens ~ As long as you try, that's all that matters
Park~Believe in your future
Sassaman~ As long as you try, that's all that matters
Swinamer~Never give up
Titmuss ~Never give up
Toli~ Always stick together
Walmsley ~ We're family and we'll help each other
Zaidi ~Always stand up for what you believe in

Our class motto (and Mrs. Merten's family motto)~  Be kinder than necessary

Our Week In Review

What a busy week!  The children are working hard and getting a lot finished in order to wrap up 2012!  We have almost finished reading our Interactive Read Aloud, The Family Under the Bridge.  This story has really opened up many discussions in the classroom. I'm very proud of how the children have learned to talk about books and the characters that interest them.

In math we have begun to work on division.  This is a new and challenging concept for many of the children. Though we will be continuing to learn about division, I thought it may be helpful for parents to have a resource. Below is a video of someone doing the partial quotients ("low stress division") method of dividing.




Our Mexico test was Wednesday this week.  The tests were sent  home today.  Mrs. Merten was very proud of the effort on this test!

Our food drive was a great success!  The food pantry volunteers arrived this morning and we filled the van with our donations.  I will post the food total as soon as I hear from them.  Below are some photos and a video of us loading the food.

I also received a note from the Franklin Food Pantry.  I have included it below (321 pounds of food!)

From all of us here at the Franklin Food Pantry, THANK YOU!!  It was a great pleasure for me to be able to speak to your students and hear all their fantastic questions!

Congratulations to you all on a job well done - you collected 321.4 pounds of food!  This will go a long way towards helping our neighbors in need during these hard winter months.



 Here are Bleddyn and Declan.  This week they came to school dressed alike ~ and it wasn't even twin day!

SPOTLIGHT ON:

EMMA:  Last weekend, Emma participated in a gymnastics meet.  She won a first place medal for her vault and second place all around.  Way to go! 

Our Week ~ Food Drive

This week we continued to read The Family Under the Bridge. The children have been doing a great job with this book!  We will wrap up this book within the next week and a half.  Reading this story has lead to many discussions about homelessness and need.

Yesterday a representative from the Franklin Food Pantry came to Kennedy and discussed the Food Pantry. We learned that this year 600 Franklin families are using the food pantry. Last year the food pantry distributed over 150,000 lbs. of food!  We will be collecting food for our food drive through Friday morning. Our food will be picked up Friday morning by volunteers and will be weighed at the pantry.  Look for our totals next Friday!  Here are some photos of this week.

Math Centers

Math Centers

Math Centers

Math Centers

Math Centers

Ms. Lynch from the Food Pantry

Making "Ojos de Dios with Mrs. Williams' class

Our Week In Review

This week we began a new Interactive Read Aloud book.  We are reading The Family Under the Bridge. This story is about a homeless family in Paris during the holiday season.  While reading this book, we are discussing cause and effect, and we will begin to discuss ways to write a brief summary.  In addition, we have really been focusing our efforts on "Talkworthy Questions".  These are questions which inspire discussion about a topic, often without an exact, right answer.  The children are doing very well with this, and I often must stop the discussion long before they are ready to end it.  We will tie this story in with our community of Franklin with our Franklin Food Pantry next week.  We will begin a holiday food drive. More details will follow after our presentation from the Food Pantry.

In math, we have been working hard at understanding decimals.  The children are progressing nicely.  We have our decimals math test this coming Wednesday, and the study guide was sent home today.

In writing we have started our second personal narrative. This time, the children are writing to a topic ~ a holiday.  This is very general, so the holiday may be Halloween, Thanksgiving, or even their own birthday!  I am hopeful that this will be a motivating topic for the children.

Creative Arts Fridays have been going great!  Mrs. Williams has finished with the children's November Acrostic poems, and they will begin to learn about a new poet next Friday.  I can't wait to see what she has in store!

We have begun to work with a new website called Glogster.  The children have a user name and password, to access their information. They may access this site from home if they like, but I've asked them not to make changes to their glogs at this time.  As we all become more fluent with the site, this may change.  I began a glog for the children, and then have asked them to complete it with details that they remember from our presentation with Mrs. Silvia last week. Look for some finished glogs posted here next week!  In the meantime, ask your child to share his /hers. They would love to !


From the Teacher's Desk
Next week, we will begin a new term.  I am hopeful that the second term will be one where we all see a big improvement with homework completion. Many of the children struggled with homework during the first term.  Some of the areas that have been challenging are:

• completing all pages of the homework and returning it the next day
• following the directions so that all parts of the assignment are complete 
• bringing home or bringing back the proper materials
• returning reading logs and getting assignment books signed

As we move toward independence and responsibility, this is something that we will work through together. When you sign your child's assignment book on Thursday nights, it is a great time to check in with him/her to see if assignments were completed that week.  I am sure second term will see 100% homework completion!

Happy Thanksgiving

This week we attended a fantastic presentation from Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University.  Mrs. Silvia will be at Kennedy 4 times this year as our "Anthropologist in Residence". She will share her wealth of knowledge about several Native American Tribes. This week's presentation was about the Natives of the Northeast (specifically New England).  As always, we are grateful to our PCC for funding such wonderful events.  The children really benefit educationally from hearing about these topics from experts.

The NE Natives were hunters and gatherers.

A stone axe made from a sapling, a stone and sinew.

A demonstration of the "Three Sisters" plants (corn, beans, and squash).

David using a fire starter

Grinding Corn into flour was traditionally a girls' job.

But..... we had everyone give it a try!

This was a traditional bow used by the Natives of the NE.

The Natives used the deer skin to keep warm.

This gardening tool was made from a sapling, sinew, and a deer shoulder bone.

This is traditional Native American clothing worn by women of the Northeast.

This is what boys from the NE tribes would have worn.

Today we gave our Thanksgiving Speeches.  I offered to video tape all speeches for the blog.  We had 4 students agree to be taped!  Below you will see pictures from the speeches, as well as the videos of those brave few!

From the Teacher's Desk

Dear Parents,

        This is the season of giving thanks!  I want to take a minute to thank you for your support of our school activities.  Thank you for all of your generous donations for the class store! I am also so grateful for the Wishing Well donations.  I will be purchasing a lot of new books for our classroom with the Barnes and Noble gift cards. All of these donations of supplies, time and energies are all greatly appreciated!

        Mostly, I would like to thank you for your support with your children.  The consistency and help you give them daily supports what we do in school, and allows the children to understand the importance of our connection.  I feel lucky to have such a wonderful group of families.

       I hope you have a wonderful long weekend and enjoy the company of family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving.

Warmly,

Katie Merten