Dear Parents, This is my final newsletter. Nov. 3rd will be my last day. I have received many hugs and wonderful cards and words from many of my past students who heard that I was retiring and have come by to say goodbye. I have shed many tears and am sure I will be a “basket case” next Monday. I have already fallen in love with each of your sweet children and will miss them terribly! But, I will be back to see them and I am very sure that Mrs. Landre will take them through the rest of the year with grace, confidence, skill, and love. The next two trimesters will be much more challenging. I know the students will all do well because each of you is so committed to the support of your children and their educations! Continue to work with them, as you have in the past, and I am sure that they will be successful beyond your expectations! Mrs. Landre is inheriting an outstanding class. They are mature beyond their years. They come to school with big smiles on their faces and a willingness to not only work hard, but to help their teammates, as well. They will continue working on Units 3 in Open Court and math. Keep your children working on those wonderful heritage dolls, and reading every night –out loud and with expression! Encourage them to keep journals and write their own stories. The more they read and write, the better their scores will be at school and the stronger their confidence and belief in themselves will be. Mrs. Landre will be organizing her own labs and I wanted her to call on volunteers where she needed them most. I have given her your names and she will be in contact with you. I also filled out the report card grades and comments and have prepared binders with copies of all the testing, so you can have mutually enjoyable and informative report card conferences. She is also aware of the three students who are leaving on independent study and has binders almost ready to go for their trips. In addition, she and Mrs. Rand in Room 16 will be organizing some intervention classes to help our struggling readers. We have begun some book clubs for our advanced readers. Hopefully, everyone will be able to be in at least one book club before the end of the year. Our room is all decorated for Halloween. Send your child with a costume that he or she can put on alone. Come and take pictures. After the parade, we will come back to Rm 15 for treats and good byes with parents. Take care. I will miss you all. Much love and many warm hugs, Mrs. Mac Mrs. Mac’s Busy Bee Newsletter October 23, 2008 Dear Parents, We are finishing up Unit 2 on Animals and getting excited at the thought of studying “Things That Go.” We are either drawing pictures of transportation, or cutting them out of magazines and newspapers and bringing them to class. We are sorting them and mounting onto our Concept Board according to whether the transportation is used on land, in the air, or on water. How many unusual forms of getting around can you find? How about a hot air balloon or a camel? Have fun being thoughtful and investigative --trying to think of a way to travel that other might not think of! Our trip to the zoo was wonderful! Thank you so much to the parents who helped us by being a chaperone –Big hugs go out to Kevin’s dad, Vanshika’s mom, and Mrs. Hubacek (a fantastic parent from last year who stepped in and help us out!) We saw some very interesting animals and truly enjoyed comparing the micro bats that the Bat Lady brought to show us on Thursday with the Macro bats at the zoo! What a huge difference in size! We continue to learn about bats, owls and spiders, and are getting to know some of the students in Room 1, as they join us for art projects and singing. Our Halloween party and parade will be here before we know it, so we are hurrying to make decorations for our classroom. We never seem to have enough hours in the day to do all the fun things we want to accomplish. Newsflash! ---Attached is our revised Prep-Schedule! Can you believe that it was change THREE more times during the last 2 weeks! I waited until Mrs. Amundson assured me this one was final before sharing it with you. Keep practicing reading at home! And, remember to play math games to practice those addition and subtraction facts. This next trimester will be full of new challenges and we want to be ready to meet them with great success! Mrs. Mac Mrs. Mac’s Busy Bee Newsletter 10/16/08 Dear Parents, Tomorrow is our “re-scheduled” trip to the Oakland Zoo. Thank you SOOOOOO much to the parents of Jia, Kevin, and Vanshika for volunteering to chaperone. We also are fortunate to have a parent from last year who was gracious enough to agree to help us out, as we were still short chaperones --- so a HUGE THANK YOU goes out to Mrs. Hubacek! Chaperones will be driving themselves to the zoo, but should MEET IN ROOM 15 AT 8:30 for instructions, map of the zoo, and a list of students in their groups. You may wish to carpool to the zoo and back to save gas. Our buses will park near zoo’s main entrance. We willwalk as a class to the front of the zoo and pose for a class picture. Bring your cameras! Then we will divide into groups and walk into the zoo together. Thank you in advance for all being on time, so we can start off on our adventure relaxed and prepared! ATTENTION PARENTS: Thank you in advance for remembering all lunches must be completely disposable ---this means no containers, thermoses, etc, and spoons, forks, or chopsticks must be disposable, as well! Everything must be something that can be thrown away when your child finishes eating! A big thank you to Joyce and Ankur for bringing in prizes for our Dragon Mart! Your generosity continues to put big smiles in our hearts! NEWSFLASH! ---Time is drawing near to begin working on the first of our grade level projects. We will be making Heritage Dolls. Watch for instruction sheet, form to be filled out, and cardboard doll “cutout” that will be coming home in Monday’s homework folder. Students have three weeks to work on this project. Due date and all instructions are on the instruction sheet. Have fun working together on this project. See you soon! Mrs. Mac Important Dates To Remember: October 17– Field Trip to the Zoo Mrs. Mac’s Busy Bee Newsletter 10/02/08 Dear Parents, We’ve started our Unit on Animals and are very excited for our trip to the zoo. Thanks so much to Bhadresh’s parents for both volunteering to help us chaperone. Also a big thank you to Vanshika’s mom for volunteering. Finally, we really appreciate Rishab’s mom and dad for volunteering to join us. Dad will take baby brother around the zoo, while mom helps us by chaperoning a group of students. It is wonderful how Room 15 parents come through when we are in need of help! Chaperones will be driving themselves to the zoo, but should MEET IN ROOM 15 AT 8:30 for instructions, map of the zoo, and a list of students in their groups. You may wish to carpool to the zoo and back to save gas. Our buses will park near zoo’s main entrance. We will walk as a class to the front of the zoo and pose for a class picture. Bring your cameras! Then we will divide into groups and walk into the zoo together. Thank you in advance for all being on time, so we can start off on our adventure relaxed and prepared! ATTENTION PARENTS: Thank you in advance for remembering all lunches must be completely disposable ---this means no containers, thermoses, etc, and spoons, forks, or chopsticks must be disposable, as well! Everything must be something that can be thrown away when your child finishes eating! A big thank you to Christopher and Joyce for bringing in prizes for our Dragon Mart. Also a big thank you to Joseph for the wet wipes. We can always use those! Your generosity puts big smiles in our hearts! We are working with subtraction and learning the bones in the body, parts of a flower, and embarking on the study of both owls and bats! Have some fun exploration at the library on these subjects. See you soon! Mrs. Mac Important Dates To Remember: October 7 – Field Trip to the Zoo Mrs. Mac's Busy Bee Newsletter 9/25/08 Dear Parents, We have had a great week of learning. We finished up another chapter in our math book and will have finished Unit 1 in reading by the end of next week. Thank you for sending in your parent sign ups. I will be sending sets of decodable booklets home to be stapled to many of you who volunteered to do work at home. I have divided up the work so as to not be overwhelming. Please try to complete the project and return it within a week. Thank you again for offering your help! Those who signed up to help in the classroom or with the computers will be hearing from me by phone next week to set up our schedule. All our permission slips are in for our trip to the zoo. Thank you so much to Vanshika’s mom for volunteering to be a chaperone. If you meant to volunteer but haven’t, just send in a note with your child letting us know. Each room needs to have at least 4 parent chaperones, so hopefully there are a few more of you that could come?? or perhaps you have a grandparent, aunt or uncle that would like to help out? A big thank you to Rishab, Snehal, Joyce and Anna for donating books from the Book Faire to our classroom library. A big thanks also to Joyce, Snehal, Deeksha, Joseph, and Bhadresh for donating prizes to the Dragon Mart. We are very excited to go shopping and spend our money next week! A heart full of appreciation to Snehal’s family for donating money for mailing our penpal packages. And we really appreciate Deeksha’s family donation of more wipes for our classroom use. We are especially grateful to Vanshika’s mom for volunteering to be our head Room Mom this year! Her help in planning our parties will be indispensable. She and I will be meeting Shortly to discuss our Halloween party and parade. See you soon! Mrs. Mac Important Dates To Remember: September 30 – Picture Day October 7 – Field Trip to the Zoo Mrs. Mac’s Busy Bee Newsletter 9/18/08 Dear Parents, Thank you so much for coming out for Back To School Night! I am so proud so many parents attended. Thank you, as well, for sending in both classroom donations and field trip slips and monies. We only need to hear from four more families! I am thrilled to have a class full of such sweet, bright children. I know it is going to be a great year for everyone. We will have finished up our beginning of the year testing by this Friday. The students have been great during this arduous process. It is nice to be able to spend more time, now, with new learning activities. My apologies for not including the colored paper needed for this week’s word collection page of our homework! You will find one in today’s Thursday’s folder. If you and your child already made your collection on another piece of paper, that is fine, too. Additionally, you will find a class schedule and a sign up sheet for volunteering in the classroom. We shout out a big THANK YOU to Chloe and Christopher for donating items for our Dragon Mart, and send out warm THANKS to Joseph, Ankur, Vatsal, Chloe, Vanshika, Snehal, and Joyce for buying books for our class from the Book Faire. Your generosity warms our heart! We are also happy to announce that Anna’s grandmother will be our Music for Minor docent. We are very lucky to have her bringing music into our lives every Thursday afternoon, starting next week. Finally, our website update is almost complete. Check back often. We will be adding events to our calendar, as planned, and changing web pages to keep interest, challenge, and learning opportunities available. See you soon! Mrs. Mac