January 27th- January 31st, 2020

Dear Families,

We had busy and fun week here in 1S!

As a celebration of earning our 70th class point and of finishing Charlotte's Web, we watched the movie together. The class was so surprised and excited to do so! We finished the movie today. If you read Charlotte's Web as a child you may remember that the end is a bittersweet, it definitely moved some of us tears. Ask your child to share what happened and how they felt about it.

In math, we have been learning and playing math games that will help us practice and solidify our math facts up to 10. We have shared the game Bear Facts Ten with you yesterday. If you have not yet, please click here to see and print the cards out for the game. We have also added instructions to two other games (Turn Over Ten and Tens Go Fish) in the folder shared. (You can even use regular cards to play all three games.) Another great way to reinforce math facts is simple words problems during dinner, in the car or etc. Here are a few examples, "If Amanda has 4 cookies and Min Young gives her 7 more, how many would she have now?", "If Min Young has 10 candies but she gives 2 to Amanda and 2 to Emily, how many would she have left?" (Using classmates names and teachers names are a great way to keep children engaged! They love it!)

In bird work, we finished our work on studying the bald eagle. We will be displaying our beautiful work on the bulletin board upstairs soon. However, our Imaginary Birds are up for display and this is how beautiful they looks!

In Spanish with Monica, we worked on an elevator art project that gave a us a chance to express ourselves artistically while practicing writing numbers and the people in our lives in Spanish !

For Mystery Guest, we had Ruth, Benjamin's mom come in and share Benjamin's favorite sport; Soccer!! Ruth read a book about soccer and we were very lucky to all get our own soccer balls! Afterwards, we went out to the field and practiced some drills and played a big game of soccer! Thank you, Ruth! 

This week in ethics we read Rhino's and Raspberries: Tolerance Tales For The Early Grades. Laura shared the Joe and the Carpenter with us.  It's a beautiful story set in Appalachia about friendship, conflict and the power of building bridges.  If you would like to share the story at home you can read or listen to it click here. 

On Wednesday, all of Fieldston Lower came together to honor Dr. Martin Luther King at our school- wide assembly. 

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Best, 

MY and Amanda

January 20th- January 24th, 2020

Dear Families,

We had a shorter week this week as we remembered and celebrated Dr. King's birthday on Monday. We learned more about his life through his son, Marty as we read the book, My Daddy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, with Laura during Ethics.

In Math, we have worked on Fact Family houses all the way up to 10! We will be continuing and practicing our fact families through many games in the coming weeks. Especially our 10s facts.
If you would like to practice at home, click here as we have added more cards from last week.

Do you know who Felix Adler is? This would be a great question to ask your child as you ask them how he is connected to our bird curriculum. :) This week, we learned about our founder Felix Adler as we also learned facts about the bald eagle! We will soon be showing off our knowledge on our bulletin board upstairs on the first floor.

We read a book called, The Eagles Are Back, which was about how the use of DDT threatened the bald eagle population to near extinction. Then magically on Friday, we were visited by a Bald Eagle while we were out on the playground!!!!We felt so very lucky ! 

We had some very special visitors in our classroom this week. A few animals from The Greenburgh Nature Center came to share interesting facts about themselves. Ask your child what the difference between poisonous and venomous is and see if they remember. We even got to touch/pet all four of our visitors!

We also finished reading Charlotte's web this week. We sat together as we read about the wonderful friendship between Charlotte and Wilber. We cheered, wondered, learned what cliff hangers are and listened quietly to see what would happen next. It was a wonderful journey we went on together and we look forward to continuing our conversations.


On Friday, we had a very special playdate with 1L as Min Young led us in celebrating the Lunar New Year. We learned all about the traditions of the New Year celebration in Korea and even made our own dumplings!

We each got an envelope with some fake Korean Money and a bookmark with each child's name written both in Korean and English. As we wished all the children on Friday, we wish everyone a very happy Lunar New Year this weekend! In case you were wondering, it is the year of the rat/mouse. :)

Best,
MY and Amanda