Group 1 Announcements:

• Next week is the NCCL Holiday concert. It will be on Thursday night, December 7, at the Unitarian Church on Willa Road. The concert starts at 7:00PM. Children should arrive at about 6:30PM.
• Group 1 will have Movement class at the U of D gym on December 4 in the afternoon. Please make sure your child is dressed for gym.

November 27 - December 1:

We have had a busy and exciting week! Our study of community and families has been quite productive. The kids have been busy designing their own town with cardboard box buildings!

We would like to enhance the children's sensibilities about adoption and different types of families within our community. We have been having class discussions and reading about this topic. However, it would be helpful if families had these discussions with their children at home to help them become more accepting and sensitive to others.

News from the kids:

• N - We cleaned up Phillips Park to help our community.
• S - We wrote silly recipes.
• A.J. - We played Hangman on the white board.
• M - In gym we learned about basketball. We practiced dribbling.
• Z - In activity time we got to sew pillows.
• N - In math we heard the story "The King's Commissioners." Then we tallied up different words that we heard in the story.
• K - We are going to take a field trip to Newark. We are going to look for certain buildings in our community.
• N - We worked on our costumes for "Chicken Soup with Rice."
• A - We read a book called Martin Bridge during reading. We talked about idioms in the book.
• O - I liked making the firehouse for our town!
• E - I liked making my community building out of boxes.
• M. - I liked practicing for our Holiday concert a lot!
• B - We cleaned up the park and I learned not to pick up dead animals.
• N - I played in the grocery store in dramatic play.
• T - I liked making the community buildings and painting them.
• I - We read some good books this week. My favorite was Cook a Doodle Doo!
• C - During Spanish we made animal puppets and then put on a Spanish puppet show.
• A- I liked playing in blocks on the city map.

November 13-17:

In math, the kids made 1000 charts. Using 1-cm graph paper, they cut out groups of 50, 25, or 20 until they had enough groups to make 1000. On their posters, they arranged the groups and "counted them out" up to 1000 (e.g. 25, 50, 75, 100, . . .). The resulting posters are on display in the "breezeless-way." We also worked on adding up the digits of license plates, continuing to add the results until we got to a single digit. For instance, the numbers in my license plate are 160084. Adding the digits (1+6+0+0+8+4) results in 19. Since 19 is not a one-digit number, we add 1+9 =10. Still not a one-digit number, so 1+0 = 1. So 1 is the "number" for my license plate. This is a good car activity--practices mental math. We also saw that if there are 9s or numbers that add up to 9, those digits can be discarded. Try it!

We compared summaries of Patricia Polacco stories with the real thing in order to help kids see that their personal narratives are much less powerful and engaging if they just summarize what has happened. Help your child be on the lookout for more stories during Thanksgiving break. Family get-togethers often bring out stories.

As a way to check students' understanding of the sound unit, we asked them to write a "sound conversation" with a partner. In addition to sharing what they know about sound and hearing, the kids also have the opportunity to work on punctuating dialogue.

Friday morning we had our Peace Pole ceremony as a school. If you've been by school, you've probably seen the pole out front. We sang some peace songs, accompanied by drummers from Group 3.

On Monday afternoon, Group 2 has movement class at the University of Delaware. We take the kids in vans to the Bob Carpenter Sports Building, where they work in small groups with physical education students. It's a mutually beneficial activity: the college kids get a reality check, and our kids get to learn new skills and games with lots of new equipment in an enormous gym.

Tuesday is our Thanksgiving feast. We will attempt to start serving food around noon, but this depends in part on how long preparations take us. We are happy to have parents join us.

Don't forget that the Group 1-Group 2 Holiday workshops are December 19, 20, and 21. If you are willing to lead a workshop, let us know! We are happy to assist with project ideas, supplies, moral support...

Thanks to everyone who has met us for conferences—100% attendance, and mostly (!) on time. We appreciate your efforts to take the time to meet with us.