Schedule, Legion of Honor, Westminster Woods, and Your LettersI

I hope the weekly class schedule that I attached to the email is helpful to you. 

I'm excited to introduce Shreya LaRoche as room parent for the Team this year. She'll be helping me with important logistics throughout the year, such as coordinating drivers for trips and food for events. Keep an eye out for her emails. I'm so grateful, Shreya!

Thank you to Valerie, Genevieve, and Shreya for volunteering to drive on next Wednesday's field tip to the Legion of Honor in the city! We'll be leaving from CCS around 9:30. 

Exactly one week after our trip to the museum, we'll take off as a class for Westminster Woods in Occidental! It's a very sweet way to start the year together. We always come back feeling more confident and independent as individuals and more connected than ever as a team. Our class is lucky enough to be working with a veteran Westminster Woods naturalist who is very experienced with third and fourth graders. We'll be studying stream and redwood ecology and getting out one day for an all-day hike! We'll enjoy nutritious meals as a school in the dining hall and evenings will be spent at an all-school campfire and a 3rd/4th grade night hike adventure. Bedtime (in beds, lights out) is 9:00. I'll be staying in the cabins with the students and it always feels like such a lovely honor to wrap the kids up with love while they're away from home. Check out the trip packet that went home on Monday and please let me know if you have any questions about the trip.

Look out for Shreya's email regarding drivers!

The students were very excited to receive your letters today. Thanks again for coming last night. I look forward to reading your completed questionnaires about your awesome kid.

I enjoyed our morning together today!
Claire and Emmy are working together on their student survey.

Welcome!

Hi families!

Welcome to another exciting year on Team 3/4! I couldn’t be more excited to get this year started with my new crew of learners. I’m back from a dually refreshing and adventurous summer, feeling full of energy and inspiration to share with the students. This blog is one of the ways that I will keep you informed as to the goings on in our class. I’ll post updates, important information, pictures, stories, and student work for you to enjoy. Please let me know if there is anything that you’re wondering about that you’d like me to focus on in my posts. This blog is for you!

Our first day together was fantastic. It felt great to see returning faces and ask them to step up as fourth grade leaders on the team. I also loved welcoming new students to my class and our school, introducing them to our classroom culture and expectations.

Today we focused on connecting with one another and beginning the important work of building our team.  We talked about the words “why” and “because” and how important these words become in the third and fourth grades. We explored some essential questions about how we want our classroom to feel and function. For example, “Why is school important to you?” and “What do the students need to do in order to have a successful year?" and "How should our classroom feel every day?" We also began to get organized and get to know the flow of daily life here. 

We also explored the concept of inference. Students looked at images, identified what they noticed, what they already know about the things they noticed, and identified what they could infer based on the evidence and their schema. Later in the day we did the same with the cover of our first text of the year, E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It is one of my all-time favorite books! It's about a brother and sister who run away from home and move into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have a fun museum-themed project planned to get the year started with a bang, and part of that is a series of field trips to local museums. Art Teacher Julie and I will be taking the kids to the Legion of Honor in the city on September 3. Drivers? Let me know if you’re available! We’ll leave first thing at 8:30.

3^rd and 4^th graders will have PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:15- 12:00. Make sure that students have appropriate footwear for their first PE class on Thursday!

Last Week of School Plan

The countdown is on! I absolutely cannot believe that we have just 4 days left in the year!

Every day we pop one of the balloons on our balloon countdown and read the note hidden inside. It tells us the special theme for the day.

Tuesday was Awesome Pencil Day- Students did their writing with their choice of cool, patterned pencil

Wednesday was Games Day- We did all of our learning through games


Here students are playing a word game called Word on the Street.

Here they are practicing converting between gallons, quarts, pints, and cups by playing Conversion Shoots and Ladders. How many full quarts are there in 33 cups? Move forward 8 spaces!

 Thursday was Story Day- I told stories from my life, I read aloud the picture books Enemy Pie and The Stranger, students read Summer Soup by Marguerite Davol, and we listened to a couple of short audio stories during Core.

Friday was Art Day- We had a coloring page on our spelling test, created silly and personalized graduation hats for the graduating 8th graders, and decorated props for an end of the year photo shoot...

...and we painted bird houses for our friends at Bello Gardens...

Next week:

Monday and Tuesday are normal school days. 

Wednesday is Grandparents Day- Grandparents and special friends are welcome to join us for a very sweet CCS tradition from 10:00-12:00. We will gather as a whole school community and the students will ask the grandparents questions about their lives, hear stories, glean wisdom, and celebrate the older members of their community. Then after lunch the Student Council will put on a whole school games event... Capture the Flag? Giant game of tag? Water Balloon toss?

Thursday is Graduation Day- Students arrive at 9:30 with their parents and gather in the sanctuary. Students must sit with their parents for the closing ceremony led by Becky. Then Team 3/4 and their parents will move to our classroom for a closing celebration. Then it's back to the sanctuary for the 8th grade graduation, followed by treats in the library courtyard. 

Campfires, Beaches, Microscopes, and Laughter

Hi everyone! There's so much to catch up on! 
Of course, I'm most excited to share our adventures in Monterey, but let's rewind the movie and check out some pre-departure learning...

The students who decided to participate in the frog dissection lab had an exciting opportunity to explore anatomy and utilize some new lab tools and skills. 

Mexico took control over California in 1822, beginning the Rancho period. The processing and exporting of cow hides and tallow was the primary economic activity of the Californios. The pastoral economy flourished, especially after the new government opened the ports of Monterey and San Diego to foreign trade. The Mexican governors began to distribute the large tracts of land, including former mission lands, to people of influence. In order to officially take control of these land grants, Californios had to submit a diseno map of the property and the design for their rancho's brand to the government. They also had to procure a herd of cattle and build a structure on the property.  Everyone on Team 3/4 has received a provisional land grant and has been working hard to meet the Mexican government's requirements. Below, they are building the necessary structure on their rancho by making adobe bricks from local materials. 

Students tested soil for clay and silt content. 

They gathered soil from different locations around campus. 

They removed rocks and sticks. 

 Teamwork makes the dream work!

Adding sand and straw to the adobe mixture. 

Stomp and dance and mix it up!

Then we carefully formed rectangular prism and left them in the sun to dry. 


A few days later all sixteen of us left for an awesome 4 days together out in the world! Our first stop was Año Nuevo State Park for lunch and a hike to view the elephant seals. We met a docent at the park who showed us around and shared lots of fun facts and stories about the giant mammals. 

Here the students are feeling and comparing the average lengths of male and female elephant seals with their eyes closed. 

Camp meals are the best! Thank you chaperones and kitchen duty team!

Alright kids, eats those veggies!

Day 2 was a trip to Elkhorn Slough where we explored the visitor center/ museum, learned about wetlands and estuary ecology, hiked through diverse habitats, and checked out some tiny invertebrates in the microscope lab. 

The microscopes were really cool! We saw brittle stars, tiny ghost shrimp, and jellies! 

Car ride giggle fest!

Snacks, games, and fresh air!

Sunset Beach at our campground was a stunning highlight for me.

Check out the positivity on the clean up crew!  :)

Another personal highlight was our Team 3/4 Capture the Flag game that eventually lured the whole school to join! Check out the blur of action at the center line. 

 Gary's busted. To jail with you!

Pancakes and sausages over the fire! 

Then Day 3 was a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I know I'm biased, but I think it's the most beautiful place. 

Lying down to watch the sardines swim circles over our heads. 

Back at camp we had another afternoon of games and relaxation. 

Balancing on the slack line. 

 The kitchen crew is preparing a mountain of tortillas and rice for the whole school community dinner. 

Post-dinner, pre-campfire elbow tag:

The 7th and 8th graders put on a seriously hilarious campfire show and, of course, we all loved the s'mores. 

 Thanks to everyone (chaperones, grocery shoppers, suitcase packers, etc!) who made the trip possible. So many memories!

We're headed to Bello Gardens on Friday for our last visit with our senior friends. We'll be doing a painting activity in the yard, sharing our favorite memories, and saying farewell to some really lovely people. Thanks drivers!