Hello Families,
It was so nice chatting with so many of you last week during parent teacher conferences. It’s great to hear what you’re hearing at home and sharing insights and observations about your Temescalians. They are a wonderful crew!
Before I jump into a recap of things we have studied the past two weeks, I wanted to let you know about upcoming events and opportunities to join in on festivities in the classroom.
Pumpkin Carving
Please send your Temescalians to school with a pumpkin the week of 10/23. Each pumpkin should be one that your Temescalian can bring independently from the gate to the classroom. If it’s too big, it’ll be unwieldy. If it’s too small, it’ll be hard to carve. The target size should be about the size of a basketball. Please write your Temescalian’s name on the base of their pumpkin with a sharpie.
We need parent volunteers on Thursday, October 26 from 8:50 – 9:50am to help scoop out the pumpkins and clean up afterwards.
We are planning a Buddies activity the following day to actually carve the pumpkins and it helps if the pumpkins are already scooped out and ready to be carved for our Buddies time.
Halloween Festivities
Please bring in recyclable materials for our Recycled Costume school wide activity by Monday, 10/30.
Halloween Parade at the UAC will be from 8:45 – 9:15am. Please plan ahead and find street parking in the neighborhood and walk over.
If you are available to volunteer in the classroom from 9:15 – 9:50am to lead a few Halloween themed activities, please let me know. I have ideas as well such as decorating cupcakes with Oreo bats or Oreo spiders or paper cup fizzing faces. I just need some adult help to facilitate these activities. Other ideas are welcome! Please contact me!
Field trip to see the Oakland Ballet at the Paramount Theatre
We need to leave TBS at 8:30am to catch BART and get to the theatre by 9:00am, as requested by the organizers. If you are running late, it may make sense for you to drive directly to the Paramount Theatre and meet us there. Please contact the front desk if that is the case and you can get my contact information so that we can find each other at the theatre. The program is from 10:00 – 11:00am. Your Temescalian can come back with the group to TBS with us via BART.
We should be back at TBS by lunch time so please prepare your Temescalian’s lunch/hot lunch as usual.
Science
We wrapped up our study of transpiration observation and started looking at different weather events. Seeing how the fall is hurricane season on the east coast, it made sense for us to dive into a study of hurricanes.
We looked at how hot water and cold water interact. We first asked the Temescalians to look at what happens when you put cold water on top of hot water. As predicted, they mix. But when you put hot water on top of cold water, the water, surprisingly, did not mix! Why? We talked about how the temperature of the water affects the water molecules, and came to the idea that cold water is stacked together whereas the hot water is moving about. While the Temescalians didn’t know it, we were talking about density. So when the hot water was placed on top of the cold water, the cold water molecules were stacked so closely together that the hot water molecules didn’t have any room to move into the cold water.
Here is a video of what we did, but in this video, they did things in reverse to what we did.
We talked about hurricanes, how hurricanes are formed, and made a chart of the wind speeds for each category of tropical storm/hurricane.
We shared videos of what a house might look like in each category of winds.
We also watched a video of what it looks like in the eye of a hurricane.
These are a few videos of what Hurricane Hunters do.
We looked at Habitat for Humanity’s tips for where a safe location is for building a home.
We’ll be building on these ideas as we pose a design challenge for the Temescalians in the coming weeks.
Math
We are wrapping up our unit on addition and subtraction patterns soon. If you’d like to practice games that we have introduced to the class at home, please click on the following links.
Carrot Grab
Rabbit Tracks
Target One Hundred
We also introduced Chromebooks so that the Temescalians could use Dreambox.
To access Dreambox at home, click on this link: Dreambox
The classroom code is: 22001
Your Temescalian’s username is their first name + first two initials of their last name + 2029
For example, if their name is Lisa Chung, their username would be lisach2029
Please contact me if you’d like your Temescalian’s password.
We are cruising along in cursive. Within the letters that start with an undercurve, we have learned the i, t, u, w, e, l, b, f.
We start our cursive practice by forming the letters with our whole arm, imagining the sky line, airplane line, ground line, and worm lines to guide our letter formation. We also choose different words to see the letter in words. Finally, we do something I call, “backboard writing”. The kids pair off and one will be the “backboard” while their partner uses their finger to write a word in cursive that I have modeled on the projector. The “backboard” will have to guess what the word is. I will usually try to write a word that is only formed with the letters that they have already learned. For example, this week, I had the kids guess the words “flit” and “elf”. Try this exercise at home with your Temescalian. Remind them to think about which letters are “tall letters that reach the sky”, “which letters touch the middle plane line”, and remind them to only cross or dot letters after they have formed the entire word! Good habits are key to a solid foundation for cursive writing.
Upcoming Events
October
22 – Fall fest at UAC 11:00 – 2:00pm
24 – Picture Day
26 – Pumpkin scooping (8:50 – 9:50)
27 – Pumpkin carving with Buddies
30 – Recycled Halloween Costume activity
31 – Halloween Parade (8:45 – 9:15) with activities in the classroom to follow (9:15 – 9:50)
A reminder about Halloween costumes, please keep weapons, full face masks, and gore at home. Temescalians will need to have street clothes to change into right after the parade.
Please keep candy at home.
November
3 – Field trip to the Paramount Theatre to see the Oakland Ballet perform (We are leaving at 8:30am and will arrive back at TBS at 11:45am)
5 – Daylight savings (We “fall back”)
18 – VIP Day
20 – 24 Fall Break
December
1 – Report Writing (No school, childcare TBD)
18 – Jan 2 – Winter Break