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= NOVEMBER/DECEMBER = Dear Parents,

We hope you were able to find time these past weeks to enjoy the beauty of autumn with your children. In October, we went on several walks throughout our campus collecting colorful leaves, seeds, nuts & numerous treasures that Mother Nature left for us to appreciate, share read & write about. It’s hard to believe that we’re already moving into the Thanksgiving & winter holiday season!

As a part of our School Community theme in November, we’ve invited Ms. Higgins & Mr. Nowak from our MICDS Communications & Publications Department to visit us. We’ve developed many questions to ask Ms. Higgins & Mr. Nowak what they do behind the scenes that make our school so special. We’ll even get to visit their offices. We plan to find ways that we can help them in their work.

Later this month Mrs. Lyle has kindly invited all the first graders to visit her in her office to answer our questions about what the Head Mistress of MICDS’ duties encompass. The goal that we have for our children is to recognize, understand & appreciate that we are all connected at MICDS. We depend upon each other, & hopefully in some small ways we too can contribute & make a difference.

We’ll also be focusing on **Fairy Tales** in our literature. The children will learn the elements that determine what makes a story a fairy tale. We’ll develop a reading vocabulary related to our theme that will be incorporated into our writings. We’ll do a genre study with Mrs. Lee on some of the many different versions of Cinderella. We’ll read numerous fairy tales including some readers’ theatre with familiar plays & graph the elements of everything we read. Each of the children will create a hand puppet of a favorite fairy tale character. We’ll learn about the history of castles, design one & write about it. After writing our own fairy tale, we’ll culminate our theme study by creating a gingerbread house to be shared with our families.

We look forward to visiting with you on the conference days.

Veronica & Rita

=** SEPTEMBER **= September 11, 2009

Dear Parents,

Wow!! We are off to a great start! We’ve been busy doing things like…

♦ Morning Meeting ♦ Calendar Activities ♦ Problem Solving ♦ ABC Books ♦ Graphs about Eyes, Hair, Siblings, Birthdays, Teeth, and Hands ♦ Poetry about how special we are ♦ Writing about our strengths ♦ Reading & sharing books with friends ♦ Poster People ♦ Self Portraits ♦ Silent Independent Reading ♦ Mapping our bedrooms ♦ Learning to be helping hands ♦ The Golden Rule ♦ Making new friends & celebrating old friendships ♦ Taking an aerial photo for our school’s 150th Anniversary

It might be fun to share some of what we’ve been working on around the dinner table.

REMINDER

Please send in the reflections & insights about your child by Sept. 30th.

Enjoy this fabulous, pre-fall weather!!

Veronica and Rita