Week of October 10-14

This week we had the Fourth Great Lesson:  The Story of Language.  Look for information to come home to facilitate conversations at home.  Your children may be curious about different languages or alphabets or learning about the Rosetta Stone.  During art this week the children made tablets of clay and wrote messages in cuneiform, a system of writing using a wedge shaped stylus developed by the Sumerians who lived along the Tigris and Euphrates River over 5,000 years ago.

The children had an impressionistic lesson involving a long black strip of cloth that represented the length of time since our earth was created.  The 30 meter black strip was unrolled on the field to reveal  a 3 centimeter white section at one end which the students were told represented the fraction of time that humans have existed on our plant.  They could see that the tiny strip of fabric represented all of human history, all of humanity:  from early humans through the Egyptians, the Greeks, early European Explorers all the way to the present.  The teachers could tell that impression of the lesson had landed when several of the students expressed awe and and amazement at how small they felt!  

During music we learned about Native American creation stories.  We learned about the importance of music and song for Native Americans and sang the Song of Happiness!

We met our new Physical Education teacher Ashley Sales!  Ashley will be working with the teachers over the next few weeks and will be taking over the PE class soon.  She has had great experience working at the YMCA and is very excited to join our staff!

This week we reviewed the hydrosphere, lithosphere and the atmosphere and learned what land and water forms are created when land and water meet on our planet earth.  Students worked with the terms lake and island, peninsula and gulf, bay and cape, strait and isthmus, and archipelago and system of lakes.

Students learned to orient oneself in relation to the four directions and worked with our Landform Mat to reinforce the name of the land and waterforms, to reinforce directions, and to provide opportunity to have conversations using the vocabulary they are learning.

Finally, we had several lessons and conversations about the life cycle of lice!  Please take the necessary precautions to check and treat children for lice over the weekend.  Staff members will be checking children on Monday morning to be sure they are nit free before they may return to school.  Thank you in advance for your help!