Happy Thanksgiving!

Next week is our first long vacation and I'm really going to miss your children! They're such a fun bunch! Our week began Tuesday with a morning learning about the Indian holiday Divali. Nisha and her mom, Tia, shared the traditions of the Indian holiday by wearing Saris and bringing one for me to wear! They learned about the holiday, which includes the lighting and burning of oil lamps, as well as learning some simple phrases in Bengali. They learn to greet each other by saying, "Namaste." Nisha gave each of us a bindi to wear on each of our foreheads. Tia brought some traditional treats to eat...they wear sort of like fudge...very sweet! YUM! Thank you, Tia and Nisha!



 We've had a lot of fun learning about Thanksgiving together. Today we made butter and ate it on crackers with a little taste of beef jerky...the butter was yummy! The beef jerky was a little too spicy for first grade palates!



Finally, the math homework tonight is a game that was played in class. It's called 50 or Bust and the following movie explains how to play the game with help from Danny and Gracie! Enjoy!

Bugs In the House Subtraction

I'm a little late getting this video out and I'm sure Greta and Cole have forgotten they helped out, but will be thrilled to see their "movie" online! 
The last homework, Bugs In the House Subtraction, was another memory game.  In this movie you'll see Greta and Cole demonstrate how the game is played!
Enjoy!

A Mouse In the House...

What a funny week! You probably heard about our dead mouse! Yes, it was true! Ugh! There was a dead mouse in our lunch bin! You can imagine my delight when I heard a child scream, "There's a rat!" Thankfully, no rat! And yes, we all check the bin each morning as the lunchboxes are loaded!

Another Fundations assessment this morning...today's assessment was of the -an and -am chunks. So words may have included: fan, can, man, ham, Pam, Sam and so on. The trick words were: or, have and from...very tricky indeed!

I sent an email about the latest PiE fundraising opportunity!  By ordering holiday cards through www.cardraising.com you can help earn  money for HCS and you get holiday cards!  AND by registering you have the chance to win a $2,000 cash prize!  You can register without ordering!

We began learning about the Pilgrims and their voyage today.  Quite and exciting story!  The crossing of the Atlantic was quite dangerous at times and quite smelly, too!  Wouldn't a field trip to Plymouth Plantation be fun?  You might consider making it a summer field trip...it's a great experience!

Bouncy House

All thing2:s considered, this was a fantastic week! We DIDN'T have a hurricane and we DID have Halloween! Wednesday was a really fun day and it made Thursday feel a little long! The kids were really great all day and it wasn't until around 2:00 that they started to be cranky with each other so we watched an episode of Arthur. They were SO quiet and several children nearly fell asleep! Time for some rest was needed! Friday was a whole new day and we began with a Fundations assessment. Unit 4 taught about "bonus letters" and the chunk -all. Words for this unit included tall, call, ball, miss, toss, puff, bell, will, buzz and fuzz. Bonus letters are used at the end of words ending with letters f, l, s and z. However, we studies several "outlaw" words that do NOT have bonus letters: bus, quiz, gas, and pal. I've been sharing the assessment folder for Fundations at conferences. You'll be able to see growth over time and at the end of the year, you can have the folder. Everyone did really well on this assessment!

Friday was a fairly ordinary day...except for the bouncy house!!! The middle school students had an after school event planned which included a bouncy house. It was set up during the middle of the day and they offered the k-2 classes the opportunity to try it out! We went down for about half an hour and it was so much fun! The pictures show several of our students thoroughly enjoying the bouncy house! Because it was so muddy around the bouncy house, you may have seen some very muddy shoes come home! Sorry about that! I forgot to bring a camera out, so Mrs. Lasher took some pics before she went inside with her class! Enjoy...we sure did!