Hello LEW Families,

In light of recent news and changes, I'm sure many of you have questions about what next year may look like.  Please feel free to email me with any concerns or questions you may have and I hope to see many of you Thursday at 4:00. 

Museum Project Supplies Needed

We still need to end the year strong and the students are feeling motivated. We have the Museum Project coming up this Friday afternoon and the students have helped us create a list of supplies that they will need to build their exhibits. If you are able to donate any of the following items, the lower el students would really appreciate it: 

• Modeling clay (lots and lots)
• bag of sand
• cardboard (lots and lots)
• duct tape 
• tinfoil (probably one package will do)
• toothpicks
• salt and flour for saltdough
• white poster board
• popsicle sticks
• binder rings (the metal rings that clasp and unclasp)

Upcoming Events and Field Trips

Museum Project Day ~ Friday, May 29^th 1:45-2:55

This is a day when all of the lower elementary combines and shares their projects and exhibits with families. It’s a fantastic experience for both classrooms since teachers and students get the chance to work in each other’s classrooms and learn and build their exhibits together.  You won’t want to miss this event!

Work Share Day ~ Tuesday, June 2nd 1:45-2:45

Come in and work with the some of our favorite classroom materials with your child.  It’s a great way to see how the Montessori materials work.  The students love giving presentations to the families.

Parent appreciation ~ Monday, June 8^th 1:30-3:00

It’s time to celebrate you! Please come and experience an event completely organized by the students to show their appreciation to you.  There will be gifts and performances! Thank you for all of your love and support.

Como pool ~ Thursday, June 4^th

We had a fantastic time at the pool last year. The entire GRS elementary had the whole pool to ourselves.  It was a great way to end the year.  We are still in need of chaperones, so if you are interested, please let me know. 

Paul and Tamarack in the Boundary Waters

Paul Brohaugh, a second year's father, is a DJ for KFAI on Thursday mornings. He shared this segment with me and we thought you would all enjoy hearing the sounds of the Boundary Waters. Tam is always on the look out for Big Foot... he has a LEW search crew at this point.   Take a listen!

https://beta.prx.org/stories/148719


That's all the news for now. Hope you're all having a fantastic, long weekend.

All the best,

Jessy

Hello All!

Quick announcement about Work Share Day

I mixed up the date! It will be held on June 2nd NOT June 5th 

Work Share Day ~ Tuesday, June 2nd  1:50-2:45

Come in and work with the some of our favorite classroom materials with your child.  It’s a great way to see how the Montessori material works.  The students love giving presentations to the families.

Field Trips

We had an amazing time on our field trips thanks to all of our fantastic chaperones :)

Science Museum with the 3rd graders

Cornucopia Farms with the 1st and 2nd graders

Dear LEW Families,

What we're doing

First years have been learning about the parts of a river and creating models to demonstrate their knowledge.  We're also learning about the purpose of a preposition.  The students are having fun creating stories with all of the parts of speech we've learned.  We're also continuing our practice with the stamp game--addition with carrying and even long division for some.

Second years have a lot of big works lately that take multiple days... parts of a mollusk, bead bar multiplication... so it was fun to get outside last week and do a fun science lesson. The students had to identify and collect 4 different types of stems: woody, herbaceous, aerial and underground. Here's a picture of our little adventure:

Third years are finishing up their study of the Mississippi River. A good friend of mine got to come in on Thursday and share her knowledge of the river with us. She has biked the entire length of the river, so it was fun hearing her stories and seeing photos of her trip.  We'll also be learning more about the lifecycle and importance of river mussels before our field trip on Friday.  In math, third years are continuing their practice with the test tubes and are also learning how to do long division with recording.  Currently, we are reading Linnea in Monet's Garden by Christina Bjork. It's about a young girl who travels to France to visit Monet's garden. The book has taught us interesting facts about French museums, botany, and impressionistic art. The students will have a chance to be artists once we're finished...  

Field Trips this Friday, May 15th!

First and second years will be going to the U of M to explore the agricultural campus.  Third years will be going to the Science Museum to check out the Mississippi River Gallery. 

Thank you to all of you that have volunteered to chaperone.  Here's a little time table for all of you:

U of M Trip

9:00 - meet in LEW

9:36 - take city bus to U of M

10:00 - U of M activities

11:30 - bus back to GRS

Science Museum

9:00 - meet in LEW

9:15 - bus to Science Museum

9:30 - Science Museum activities

11:45 - bus back to GRS

Touch Tank

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of having some students from the U of M come and talk to our class about invertebrates! We learned about marine biology, the importance of diversity in the ecosystem, food webs, and what we can do to help preserve marine life. It was great for the students to see some real-life examples of all of the invertebrates they've been learning about, especially all of the echinoderms! 

Here are some photos from the experience: 

 Courtney, Brittany, and Sam

 Horseshoe Crab

 Sea Urchin

 Echinoderm

It was a fantastic time and we hope to have them back again next year.

That's all for now. Have a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards,
Jessy

Dear Lower Elementary West Families,

GRS Occupational Therapist, Christine Spray, doing mindfulness activities. She'll be coming in every Friday to work with small groups of students.  We're all really enjoying her presence already :)

What we’re doing in the classroom

First years have started gardening in and outside of the classroom. Courtney Tchida, a mother of our first year students, has come in to share her expertise of gardening and agriculture with the students and we feel so fortunate.  Students have also continued practicing using materials like the stamp game and the golden mat to practice addition and multiplication.  On Friday, first years learned about a research material that they can use to study animals. They’ll answer questions like: What does your animal eat? How do they move? How do they protect themselves? It’s a simple material that helps the students learn how to do more in depth research of animals.

Second years are continuing their work with bead bar multiplication and taking that knowledge to the checkerboard work we’ll be exploring.  They are also creating beautiful posters, books and cards based on the parts of the mollusk.  The mollusk was the first animal to have a shell made of calcium. Yay for the building blocks of the bones in vertebrates! With everything coming to life outside, the second years will also get the chance to explore and identify different types of flowers as well as get the chance to get their hands dirty in the garden.

Third years have finished up their work with the study of a nation and their collections of maps are quite the feat! We’ll be exploring a very important water form that they identified in the U.S. Don’t want to give too much away, but we’re hoping to study this water form and then hopefully take the third years on a trip to the science museum to study this water form with the experts. I’ll keep you posted if we can make this happen. We’ll definitely need some chaperones.  Third years have also been fine-tuning their long division skills with the test tubes, getting closer and closer to learning how to divide abstractly. 

Important dates to mark on your calendar

Spring Festival ~ Saturday, May 2nd 4:00

Come and celebrate Spring with us at GRS. There will be games, activities, food, and sunshine!

Museum Project Day ~ Friday, May 29^th 1:45-2:55

This is a day when all of the lower elementary combines and shares their projects and exhibits with families. It’s a fantastic experience for both classrooms since teachers and students get the chance to work in each other’s classrooms and learn and build their exhibits together.  You won’t want to miss this event!

Work Share Day ~ Friday, June 5^th 1:30-3:00

Come in and work with the some of our favorite classroom materials with your child.  It’s a great way to see how the Montessori material works.  The students love giving presentations to the families.

Parent appreciation ~ Monday, June 8^th 1:30-3:00

It’s time to celebrate you! Please come and experience an event completely organized by the students to show their appreciation to you. Thank you for all of your love and support.

Upcoming Field Trips

Como pool ~ Thursday, June 4^th

We had a fantastic time at the pool last year. The entire GRS elementary had the whole pool to ourselves.  It was a great way to end the year.  If you are interested in chaperoning, please let me know. 

U of M Agricultural Fields ~ Date TBD/mid-May

We’re hoping to send the first and second graders to check out the agricultural department at the U of M.  Courtney Tchida works in this department, so we’re hoping we can take advantage of her connections and go and visit sometime in mid-May. Will need chaperones.

Science Museum ~ Date TBD/mid-May     

Third years will get the chance to explore a specific exhibit in the museum. Will need chaperones.

That's all for now. 

I hope you all have a beautiful, last week of April.

Kind regards,

Jessy

Hello LEW Families!

What we're doing

First years are classifying and reading about vertebrates and invertebrates.  They're also charting growth of pinto beans and corn seeds. We learned about germination through reading From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons and the students are measuring the growth of their seeds from day to day.  They're also practicing dynamic addition and multiplication problems, using the stamp game and the golden mat for larger multiplication problem.  

Second years are reviewing types of polygons and combining geometry with arithmetic. They are practicing multiplication by creating rectangles - for instance 5x6 would by a 5x6 rectangle. Second years have also just learned about the parts of a mollusk.  We got to feel and learn about why mollusks are important to the evolution of animals! They've just finished up dissecting and writing about the parts of flowers as well.  Ask them about the purpose of the corolla or the stamen. 

Third years just finished up MCA testing and they were troopers and patient with finicky technology.  They are also currently working on the study of a nation, using the U.S. as an example.  We talked about what a nation is--it's not just a random place on a map. A nation is a place filled with different languages, foods, mountains, rivers, symbolic flags, national birds and flowers. It's a place people feel proud enough to defend and maintain.  By the end of this work, students will have a collection of U.S. maps, each depicting a different aspect of the nation.  Third years are also collecting data through line plots. Some plotted the number of pets each student has or the number of electronics in each household. Ask your child what they plotted.

GRS Garden Time

Courtney Tchida, one of our first year parents, has a graciously agreed to work with the students in the garden.  They are going to help each other make the elementary plot into a salad garden. Big thanks to Courtney for sharing her agricultural expertise with us! 

Big thanks to all of you for your contributions at IRACE.  

It was a beautiful day. Our classes combined to enjoy a meal together and the food was delicious. Thank you! 

The adolescents also came in and shared an activity with the students. They created peace doves and hung them up around the school. 

Check out the pictures below:

Thanks again to all of you for helping make IRACE such a success. 

Enjoy the springtime sunshine!

All the best,

Jessy

Happy Spring Break!

IRACE

Wednesday, April 8th. 

I-Race is a day where our entire school community gathers and discusses topics around race. Elementary will be teaming up with adolescents to do a peace activity and the whole elementary community will share lunch time together, eating different foods inspired my our families' cultures.  Please read the flyer below:

Bring Food For IRACE Summit 2015! IRACE is a day where students can talk about race. Bring a dish that is important to your family that relates to your cultural background. The Summit is on April 8th. Bring a dish that is important to your family or your culture!

Last year was a major success. The students had an amazing time connecting with one another, the food was delicious, and the parent volunteers were an integral reason why it all ran so smoothly.

We need your help!

We would love your support again this year. If you have the time and you are able, cook a meal together as a family to share for this special event. If you also have the time to volunteer to help set up, serve, and clean up, we would greatly appreciate your support. We would most likely need help from around 10:30-1:30.

 Please contact me if you're interested in volunteering.  

  

What we finished up this week...

We all had the chance to do a little science experiment with mummification this week since so many students were fascinated by Ancient Egypt during our African unit.  We mummified apples by using sodium and sodium bicarbonate (salt & baking soda). This mixture is called Natron and it is the same mixture that bodies were buried in to be preserved in Ancient Egypt.  We learned that it was believed that the dead would need their bodies in the afterlife, so they needed to be kept in tact.  All organs except for the heart were taken out before the bodies were placed in the natron mixture, so the students wanted to leave in apple seeds to represent the heart.  We wrote down how to do the experiment, the supplies we needed, and came up with a hypothesis about what we thought would happen to the control apple and the natron apple. We already saw a drastic difference between the two just after 5 days. Ask your child what they observed.  

First years have completed their study of the five vertebrates, ending with an exciting experience with one of our favorite school mammals--Bella the bunny.  We had the chance to observe Bella all week, take care of her and study her characteristics.  We also finished creating and studying the parts of a mountain. We still practicing addition with the stamp game and the bead frame, as well as learning how to do multiplication using the golden mat--a precursor to the long multiplication problems they will do with the checkerboard.  

Second years have finished up their study of their physical maps of Africa and their salt dough maps looked fantastic. Some students may need to put some finishing touches on their maps like painting the mountains, rivers, deserts and forests and labeling all of the landforms and water forms.  We also did a study of Ancient Egypt and learned about the importance of the Nile River and learned more about the geography of the region.  We reviewed how to do all of the operations using the stamp game and we also polished up our search for 10 addition facts.  

Third years also brought home their salt dough maps of Africa and may just have a couple of parts to add to the finished product.  We also spent some time studying  Nelson Mandela and his influence on South Africa.  Fortunately, one of our third graders is from South Africa and has been sharing his knowledge and experience of the country with all of us.  We've also studied the next animal in our animal classification study--the arthropod. Ask your third grader what the evolutionary game changer was for the arthropod.  Third graders have also been practicing rounding to the nearest 10, 100, and 1000 as well as utilizing input and output tables. 

Third Grade MCA Reading Test - April 9th & 10th 

Third graders will be taking the MCA reading test on the Thursday and Friday after Spring Break.  We've been practicing reading stories and answering comprehension questions about the text all throughout the year and I've enjoyed the discussions we've had and the progress they've made.  Just like any day your child comes to school, we just ask that they come well-rested and nourished ready to learn and participate.  

Big Thanks!

A huge thanks to all of you for buying supplies from our wish list posted at conferences.  Students are excited to use the playground equipment some of you brought and the adults are thankful for the extra office supplies.  We are all very grateful to all of you for your support.  

Please let me know if you would be interested in volunteering at our IRACE event on Wednesday, April 8th and I hope you all have a fantastic spring break!

In appreciation,

Jessy

Hello Families!

Three short pieces of news:

1. Early Release on Wednesday @ 12:00

Please keep in mind that we have a half day on Wednesday and no school on Thursday and Friday for conferences.

2. Water Bottles and warmer weather

With temperatures rising, it's nice to have reusable water bottles handy for recess and walks to the park.  Please consider sending your child with a water bottle labeled with their name. Snow boots will be going home this week.  

3. Classroom Deep Clean: We are still in need of adult volunteers to assist in our next classroom deep clean on Tuesday, March 17th from 5-7pm. These events help keep our learning environment sanitary, beautiful and orderly.  Many hands make light work!  Please RSVP to Jennifer Nelson if you can attend.

All the best,

Jessy