Dear Moms and Dads,

I hope you have enjoyed all of the photos (Arbor Day, Green Up, Shelburne Farms) I have sent your way recently. My thought is that they will help give you another perspective of what your child is doing at school.

We finished making our last type of paint paper this week called marbleized paper. Now, we’ll be working to sort our paint papers into categories such as those that would be good for time of day or sky backgrounds, those that are good for place such as plant, ground or water colors. The children will also look for images of animals within their paint papers that may be used as a character for their story. Once we have our paint papers categorized, we’ll begin to use them to weave the images we found in our papers into a story. We’ll talk about what makes a good story: characters, problem, solution, and wrap up to organize a story. Once they have a story in mind, they will rehearse it orally several times to their peers. Then, they begin to cut out the papers to build their pictures to help support their story. Then, at the end, they have created such as treasured keepsake!

Here are a few photos of our marbleizing.

What might prevent you from touching a plant or animal? Sharp prickles, disgusting smell, strong poisons? Examples of all of these abound in the natural world. Every species relies on certain defenses for survival. During Four Winds on Wednesday, the children went outside to find examples such as thorns and burdocks. They also found out in a puppet show that toads excrete a nasty tasting fluid from their skin to protect themselves from predators. Please ask your child to give you more examples.

Last Friday, we met with our learning partners to ask Mr. Dalsimer and Mrs. Harvey some questions about our peace garden projects. This week we’ll meet with Mr. Nelson (our past lawnmower) to ask if we need to be aware of any mowing issues when planting, installing path markers, and installing a bench. We are so happy to have the first new planting near the peace garden: the tree from the Waterbury Rotary Club.

We met with Mr. Wagner on Wednesday, to see if he will be able to help with the project or has any materials we might be able to use.

Our "Blue" words are not adding up as quickly as our spring words did. So, please keep thinking about this with your child. We’ll have the duel tomorrow.

Here are some "egg turners":

Questions to ask your child this week:

How did you make marbleized paint paper?

How many "blue" words do we have so far?

What are your new spelling words?

What can you tell me about animal and plant defenses?

What did Mr. Wagner say about the peace garden?

What groups did you sort your paint papers into?

Have you turned the eggs yet?

DATES TO REMEMBER: