Colonial Fair on Friday at 2:30!

Friday, December 16

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope that you are managing to stay warm on these freezing days!

Special Day Today

I used to work for an AmeriCorps program that focuses on science and environmental education in schools. Today, 14 corps members from that program came to Center/ Pepin to teach at the All School Assembly and in classrooms. Our students got to learn about weather and design a structure to withstand the impacts of extreme weather (this is a science standard for third grade). Find out about the design that your child came up with and what they learned.

Next Week

Our learning content next week will be a little different because of the upcoming holiday. We will be skipping spelling and vocabulary next week. We will focus on reading, math, writing, and social studies, mostly with special projects. There are all school events on Wednesday and Thursday. In addition, we will be wrapping up our unit of Massachusetts’ Colonial history with some displays about towns and life in Puritan villages. If you would like to come see the displays at 2:30 on Friday afternoon, please let me know by email or note.

Reading Over Vacation

The more students read, the better they get at reading! It seems so simple, but I am sure that it is not as easy to convince your child to read at home. Over this break, students should ideally be reading 20 minutes a night, or what comes out to 20-30 minutes per day. For example, maybe they do not read one day and the next day they curl up somewhere and read for an hour.

To motivate students to read over this break, they will be doing a short book project about one book that they read. Students will need to finish a book and do a drawing/ writing project about it. I will send that home next Friday. Additionally, I will send home simple book logs where students can record how many books and pages they read and I will give a prize to the student who read the most pages.

Happy holidays!

Yours truly,

Jessica Harwood