Fifth graders built rectangles with manipulative tiles to gain a better concrete understanding of factors and multiples.

Carey, Strawberry’s assistant, works with Mike during fifth grade math.

Buddy classroom, Blackberry Creek, where we learned about Rosh Hashanah this afternoon. We feasted on apples from Mike’s tree dipped in sweet honey. May it be a sweet new year.

Apples and honey.

Today’s birthday boy chose popcorn with parmesan and hot sauce for the brave of tongue.

Happy Rosh Hashanah, and welcome to our first full week of school. I will see most of you on Back to School Night this Thursday, so many more details to come, but I wanted to give you a description of birthday traditions in Cerrito, since we have two birthdays already this week.

Our school is great at birthdays, starting with an impressive celebration at the ECC, complete with birthday books that detail every year of a child’s birthday and the child physically walking around the sun for each year of their life. Cerrito’s tradition is good, and it has gotten even better this year. Here it goes (skip to number four for the new part if you are a fifth grade family):

1. Parents arrange a day with teachers that works for their schedule to come into the class – usually at 2:45 on M-Th or 1:45 on Fridays. We will flex for your schedule.
2. Parents bring in photos to share of the child’s life. You may choose to add another year to the birthday book they began way back at the ECC. You may just email me a digital slideshow, bring in a thumb drive, or bring your own laptop. We have a Smart Board, so digital is a fine option. You might just bring in ten or so photos of the old school, glossy variety.
3. We will appreciate the student after seeing the photographs. This has traditionally been my favorite part – we stick with specific and sincere appreciations and stay away from the insipid words nice, funny, and cool.
4. Here’s the new part: you don’t have to cook, buy, or prepare  any sweets. We will! Julia and I created a menu of delicious, healthy treats – some sweet and some savory – and the birthday child will choose a few friends to cook with. Today, he chose popcorn. On Wednesday, it will be banana bread. The reasons for this change are multifold – including equity, community building, and teaching good eating habits. Julia and I both love cooking, and I am perennially amazed by how much more adventurous students are when they are eating their own cooking. Students will be making fruit smoothies, homemade hummus, and other delicious snacks that will make for a better soccer practice after school than cupcakes, and the load is off parents. I am going to send around a collection on Back to School Night to help fund this project, and folks can contribute whatever feels right. If we average anywhere between ten and twenty dollars per family, this is going to be the best year of birthdays ever.

Ask your child what they signed up for on their birthday, and let’s set up a day. Summer birthdays will be celebrated on or near the half birthdays (usually in January or February). Happy birthday to all.

Homework (if your child is busy with Rosh Hashanah tonight, please except them from this)

Math:

4th graders have a number talk.
5th graders have number puzzles. They can choose from any of the other homework sheets in the packet if they would like to get ahead. Here’s the packet for the week.

Read:

20 minutes and do one response in your reader’s notebook