Classroom News

E.C.O.:

Our final E.C.O. lesson of the year will be next Tuesday, May 23rd.  We will be learning about star-nosed moles.  Please help your child wear appropriate clothing and footwear for spending the morning outdoors.  Depending on the weather, students may want to wear layers, sunscreen, a hat, and/or bug spray.

Also, a special request… if you have a bandana or something that could be used to cover your child’s eyes for a star-nosed mole activity, please send it in with your child on Tuesday morning.  Thanks!

Special Events:

Our class participated in several special events this week!  On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to watch the U32 Middle School band perform along with some older EMES students.  It was exciting to watch the musicians play and to learn the names of the various instruments.

On Wednesday, we had a PBIS Kindness All-School Meeting where we honored students’ participation in activities that spread kindness throughout our building and beyond.  In our Thursday morning PBIS groups, students worked on these projects, which included making cards,creating dog toys for the dogs at the Central Vermont Humane Society, and painting rocks with special messages.  Ask your child about his or her group project!

On Thursday, we participated in the K-3 Spring Concert.  I was so impressed by the hard work and positive attitudes that our class showed throughout our practices and this final performance.  Thank you to everyone who was able to join us for this special event!

Discovery:  Learning about the States and Properties of Matter

This week during Discovery/Science time, we looked at two different animated models of the atoms in solids, liquids, and gases.  We noticed how the speed of the atoms changed as the state changed and how this was a result of how much heat was added or subtracted.

Next, we participated in a demonstration called Racing Molecules.  First, students had to create a hypothesis that explained what they thought would happen when I added a drop of red food coloring and a drop of blue food coloring to hot, room temperature/warm, and cold water.

We also talked about the importance of controls and variables when creating a fair test.  In this experiment, the some of the controls were the amounts of water and food coloring, the type of jar, and the type of liquid.  The variable was the temperature of the water.

As you can see in the photos, students carefully observed what happened during the demonstration, drew scientific drawings, and wrote about our observations.  Ask your child what happened in each jar! 

Montshire Museum Field Trip:

On Monday, June 19th, the 1st and 2nd grade classes will be taking a field trip to the Montshire Museum.  Please keep an eye out for our permission slip coming soon.  

We have room for a limited number of chaperones to join us on this trip, so please let me know as soon as possible if you would be interested in coming.  We especially need Level 2 volunteers, but may have some spaces for Level 1 volunteers, too.