Excited to Learn!

Happy New Year!!

Your children have returned to school with joyful hearts and their incredible love of learning. Yesterday, Holly spoke about some of her experiences in China, and, soon, the children were excitedly sharing information and stories about China, teaching others how to speak Chinese, using the globe to explore why it might have been so cold in Beijing, and asking questions about that fascinating country. Guess what! They decided we need to do a mini-Inquiry about China. Are we surprised? Actually, that will fit in nicely with our "100 Years in Manoa" celebration because we are going to have a Chinese-inspired Kite Day, which will bring back an old tradition to MPI. We are also hoping that some parents and families will teach us about Chinese New Year and other interesting aspects of that culture.  I will show the children what China was like when I visited in 1978, and Holly and her family are preparing a presentation of what it looks like today--a nice comparison! Someone offered to bring in their mother's pictures taken a long time ago in China. Someone else volunteered their parent to come and teach us about Chinese writing. As always, you are welcome and much appreciated, one and all!! There is a lot of good translated Chinese children's literature, and some of you might like to come in to read to the children. Please, let me know if you have something to share!

100th Day of School
The 100th Day of school will be Tuesday, January 29th. If you and your child would like to make something to represent the 100th Day, please, bring it to school on that day. This activity will be optional this year, but we hope many of you decide to brighten our room with a collection, collage, or picture to represent that milestone.

Portfolios
Please, return your child's portfolio to school by Friday, January 18th. Be sure to fill out the parent response sheet and share it with your child. You also need to return the yellow Art portfolio.

Camera
Someone left a very small Nikon Coolpix L3 camera on my desk on Presentation Day.  Let me know if it belongs to you.

Curriculum
This has been a week to catch up on all the things the children marked as "interesting" in books and magazines.  At the end of last semester, we just didn't have time to talk about everything. Today, during Literature Time, I showed all the marked pages in the Amazing Creatures book. Even I was amazed!! 

The children wrote excellent accounts of their vacations, and we all shared our writing! They are all able to write narrative with confidence and style now. Time to start focusing more on those pesky periods and capitals, but please leave that up to me. We will be having a poetry unit at the beginning of this semester. Because the children always write a poem or anagram in their birthday cards for others, they have a good sense of poetry already. I think they will enjoy writing Haiku. We will put together an anthology for all of you to enjoy. Mrs. Trowbridge will help us complete our "Just So" stories, and we will put them together to be shared once they are illustrated. 

It delights me to be teaching and enjoying your wonderful children in the New Year!

Posted on January 10, 2008 11:56 AM | Permalink