Mrs. Orr’s Classroom News

January 3, 2008

Dear Moms and Dads,

Welcome back to school! I hope you all had time for some extra snuggles with your child during our vacation.

We will be X-Country skiing or snowshoeing on Thursdays at 12:00 beginning NEXT week. (The weather forecast sounds like it will be too cold today to begin). Therefore, please send extra mittens and socks with your child on Thursdays. We have outside recess right before we go skiing so your child’s mittens may get wet. It probably wouldn’t feel very good to have to wear wet mittens another hour for skiing/snowshoeing! Thank you to Lisa Ransom, Scott Baughman, and Pam Dow for volunteering to help us on these adventures.

We are beginning a new science unit about states of matter. We’ll be exploring liquids to begin with. We’ll be coming up with a definition of a liquid as something that pours. We’ll also investigate how some liquids move as they pour. Some liquids stick and slide down the container slowly such as honey and molasses. These are called viscous liquids. Viscous will be one of our new vocabulary words along with transparent and translucent.

The long wait has finally arrived for the second graders: they are beginning to learn cursive handwriting.

We made New Year’s resolutions for our memory books today. Some of them were as follows: I will not fight with my sister, I’ll stop sucking my thumb, I’ll help animals, I’ll stop watching so much T.V., I’ll play less video games, and I’ll read more.

I am sending home some new "homework" for your child. I am asking that your child read at least 5 nights a week for at least 20 minutes. There are three types of reading: reading aloud to someone, reading alone independently, and listening to someone read aloud. I would like your child to do each type of reading at least once per week. There is a reading chart for your child and you to keep track/record each day’s reading and a more detailed letter of what I am asking for in your child’s backpack today. If you still have questions, please let me know. I will record each week’s reading chart returned as "homework returned". When your child returns 5 reading charts, he/she will get to visit my treasure basket for a prize. Please make sure your child’s name and your signature are on each chart when you return it.

Our parent volunteer word card checkers will begin to check all of the words your child has stored in his/her word bank. They will put the words still recalled quickly into an envelope to send home for you to see. You might work with these words at home and sort them into groups such as: words that rhyme, words that have 2 syllables, words that have a short vowel sound, or words that have long vowel sounds.

Before vacation, I asked your children to take home the bags of extra clothes that they had in a plastic bag in their cubbies. I thought they might need washing and some needed to be switched to winter clothing. You might want to make sure you send a new set of clothes back in a plastic grocery bag LABELED with your child’s name. These extra clothes come is very handy if your child has a spill or snow pants soak through outside. Thank you.

Dates to remember: