First Two Weeks

Hello Families!

I hope your children have had a wonderful two first weeks of school! I know it has been wonderful working with them and getting to know them!

The kids designed our room set up, have helped put away materials and have arranged out book shelves. They are doing a wonderful job working together! Over the next few weeks we will be establishing class rules, norms and expectations. This is when we all really get to know the other people in the room and how we start thinking about how we can take care of ourselves, take care of each other and take care of our school. This will be the foundation of our work going forward this year.

Holy dominoes, Batman!

Next week we'll being to dig our teeth into literacy time by practicing reading to self and doing some self-directed writing and handwriting practice. I'll also being doing our annual battery of beginning of the year assessments to help guide our work in word study, phonics, handwriting, reading and writing.

We have also had the pleasure of letting go of some monarch butterflies that we raised and hatched. It is always such a wonderful experience to share with children. We were talking about it today and we think that the children of Vermont are probably responsible for the huge number of butterflies we've seen this year!

To go along with the theme of autumn, I was wondering if any of you know someone with an apple grinder and press that we can use here for our 1/2 team to make some cider. If you know of anyone who'd be willing to let us use one, it would be greatly appreciated.

We were able to get out to the outdoor classroom today (Friday) and the kids did a great job talking about our second week and also about how we are going to use the space and spend as much time outside as we can. We'll be making science journals next week as well.

Information:

• September Dates
• September 9 - Picture Day!  
• September 18 - Instrument Rental Night, 5:00-6:15pm in Rumney Gym (Also Board Meeting at Doty, 6:30pm)
• September 24 - All School Meeting 9:05-9:35
• September 25 - Open House, 5:30-6:30pm
• September 26 - Kindergarten Screening Day
• September 27 - All-School Outing

I think that's about it, please be in touch with any questions, thoughts or concerns any time.

Enjoy the weekend!

~B