Our Halloween parties were a lot of fun. I hope you’ve all had a chance to see the pictures. Thank you to everyone who contributed paper goods. Now it’s on to November…
There will be no school on Friday, November 11th in observance of Veterans Day.
The next parent coffee hour will be Tuesday, November 15th. Meet after drop off at the bottom of the stairs at the parking lot entrance. Thank you to Jenna Leary and Alison Doak in Mrs. Mione’s and Mrs. Lyons’s class for hosting. Next month’s coffee hour will be Wednesday, December 14th.
We’ll be having our traditional Thanksgiving feast (complete with turkey and all the fixings!) on Monday, November 21st, and Tuesday, November 22nd. The children will be doing most of the cooking themselves. Thank you to Mrs. Keady for volunteering to cook the turkeys and to Steven Mason for donating them. Please see the sign-up sheet on the tables at each of the entrances if you’d like to contribute to our celebration.
School will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday November 23, 24, and 25. Classes resume Monday, November 28th.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the Mixed Bags fundraiser. $2,889.00 was raised for our school! Special thanks to Jen McNulty for organizing the sale for us.
It’s been a beautiful fall but there have been a few cold days and they’re bound to get colder. We take the children out every day. Please make sure they’re dressed warm enough and label their coats, hats, and mittens with their names.
A lovely Spode plate was left at the parent social last month. You can claim it on the round table near the playground entrance.
Happy Thanksgiving!
What’s Happening in Mrs. Mione’s and Mrs.Lyon’s Class
Poof! October came and went like magic. We had a great visit to the farm. Maybe you saw our pictures on our tractors. We made yummy granola bars and used rhythm sticks.
Jake Walker’s Mom brought in a chicken and a rabbit that we had a great time feeding. Thank you Mrs. Walker!
We learned about how pumpkins grow and made our own paper bag pumpkins. The finale for October was our Halloween parties which everyone enjoyed. Thank you to Nick Tsanotelis’s Mom and Dad for giving us a large pumpkin. We carved it into a Jack-o-lantern for our party.
In November we will cook for our Thanksgiving feast. Happy October birthday to Anabel!
What’s Going On in Mrs. McArdle’s and Mrs. Wilkinson’s Class
The students in our classroom are becoming great friends and seem to be very happy here at The Campbell School. Teaching them has been a pleasure.
Community helpers week went well. The children enjoyed learning what community helpers do. We read stories about community helpers: fire fighters, librarians, teachers, police officers, animal control officers, postal workers and construction workers.
We had a very important visitor come in to see us – Mrs. Bersani the Milton Animal Control Officer. Mrs. Bersani discussed animal safety with the children.
Currently, the children are learning about shapes. Soon you will see a paper shape train come home. We are also working on our All About Me books. These little books are great little keepsakes that you will enjoy.
Our first Mystery Reader of the school year was Mrs. Doiron (Enzo’s mom). Enzo was so happy to see her walk through the door. The whole class was very welcoming and enjoyed listening to her story. Thank you Mrs. Doiron!
We are looking forward to doing so much more!
Happy Birthday to Layla, Enzo, Lucas, and Matthew!
News from Mrs. Flaherty’s and Mrs. Truax’s Class
Some of our favorite books we read this month are:
What Will the Weather Be Like Today? by Paul Rogers
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco
Christopher Columbus by Kimberly Weinberger
Water by Frank Asch
M&M Counting Book by Barbara Barbieri McGrath
The Popcorn Book by Tomie DePaola
Pete’s A Pizza by William Steig
Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff
Pajama Day by Lynn Plourde
Changing Seasons by Rose Greydanus
Big Dinosaurs by Tori Kosara (Ian’s share)
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Why Do I Wash My Hands? by Angela Royston
I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child
The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis
Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall
What’s Under the Bed? by Joe Fenton
The Spider and the Fly by Tony DiTerlizzi
A Dark Dark Tale by Ruth Brown
Scary Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting
Arthur’s Halloween by Marc Brown
We began October by meeting letter W. We glued black strips to form W and painted with white wheels for reading & literature to develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, awareness of print, and letterforms and to explore various types of lines in art. We cut pieces and assembled weather wheels to identify the characteristics of local weather. We combined ingredients to make Thunder Cake to relate the theme of the book to personal experience and explored ways materials can be changed by combining them. We laced October bats for physical development to use hand eye coordination, visual perception and visual tracking to do simple weaving activity. In the spirit of Columbus Day, we decorated the ship Pinta with sails big, bigger, and biggest. We wrote and illustrated “water” for our Wordbook. We marble painted bats to build upper body strength and stability to gain controlled movement of our shoulders. Carolyn Truax visited and brought a fun graphing activity with M&Ms. Carolyn makes math fun and delicious.
Then we met letter P. We painted perfectly painted purple P for reading & literature to develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, awareness of print, and letterforms. We popped popcorn kernels to relate the theme of the book to personal experience. For science, we explored how the kernels change when heat is added to make them “pop” into popcorn. We read Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and completed math activities. We combined ingredients to make Bisquick Pumpkin Bread and explored ways materials can be changed by combining them. We made paper pepperoni pizza. We wrote and illustrated “pig” for our Wordbook. We said goodbye to P with Pajama Day. We made pajama pals, wore pjs, and ate pancakes.
Then we met letter H. We glued strips to form haunting Halloween H for reading & literature to develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, awareness of print, and letterforms. We illustrated The Napping House sequence activity and decorated haunted houses. We combined ingredients to make healthy hearty oatmeal cookies and explored ways materials can be changed by combining them. We demonstrated how germs (lollipop with powdered sugar) could easily stick to dirty sweaty fingers and be transferred into your body. We wrote and illustrated “hand” for our Wordbook. We said goodbye to H with Happy Hat Day by making our own paper bag hats, and wearing some of our favorites.
Then began all things Halloween… we decorated witches hats with our names. We read What’s Under the Bed? And illustrated what we thought was under Fred’s bed. We colored a Halloween shape page to identify the shapes in the puzzle and follow a color grid to match the shapes. We read The Spider and the Fly and made spider hats for visual art and counted eight legs for number awareness. We laced spider webs for physical development to use hand eye coordination, visual perception and visual tracking to do simple weaving activity. We read A Dark Dark Tale; the children cut and assembled three dimensional black cat centerpieces for visual art. We cut and assembled Jack-o-lantern lanterns for visual art. We celebrated our Halloween holiday with a costume parade and illustrated what we look like.
We enjoyed music with Mrs. Stoyle and movement with Mrs. Wilkinson.
Happy Birthday to Nicholas H., Nathaniel, and Jack who celebrated their birthdays this month!
Thanks to all our parents who made such generous and thoughtful donations to our Halloween party: Lily Heaton’s and Nicholas Pulgini’s mothers for all our wonderful paper products, Nathaniel and Alexa’s mothers for the juice boxes. We are very grateful to all of you!
In November we will prepare for our Thanksgiving feast and we will be meeting letters B, M, K and D.
October Fun in Mrs. Zizza’s and Mrs. Aldrich’s Class
We have all settled in with our classroom routines and have made new friends. Music class with Mrs. Stoyle started and we learned some great Halloween and fall songs. Rebecca, Olle, and Libby like the song “Skin and Bones.” Juliette and Julianna like the song “Black Cat.” Sasha and Alexander liked learning new movement games with Mrs. Wilkinson.
We learned how to write the letter W. For art we painted with watercolors and drew a picture that showed what is outside of our windows at home. We even made waffles that tasted wonderful! Jessica really liked the waffles.
The next letter we learned to make was the letter H as we got ready for Halloween. We wore our happy hats one day to school. It was so much fun to see Christopher wearing his Disney hat. We made haunted Houses to put on the wall. Juliette made sure to draw her Dad at the door of her house. We used our hands and made ourselves look like ghosts to hover over our haunted houses.
Then came the letter M and we had fun with some M & M math. It was fun to sort and count how many M & M’s came in our packets and then we got to eat them! For art we made mummies for or haunted houses.
Halloween week came and we learned how to make the letter P. We celebrated with a Halloween party and a parade with all of our friends. Shannon dressed as a dragon and Jaden dressed as Woody. It was so much fun seeing our friends all dressed up. On Friday we had a pajama day where we found the answer to our question, “If You Give a Pig a Pancake….”
We are very busy learning our letters, colors and numbers and we are working very hard. If you could remember to bring a backpack for all of our work to go home in that would be helpful.
A very special 4th birthday was celebrated with Sasha this month.
Some books we read –
What Will the Weather Be Like Today? By Paul Rogers
When I Go To the Farm by Dempsey Parr
I Went Walking by S. Williams
The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins
Who Took the Farmer’s Hat? By J. Nodset
The Leaf on the Tree by T. Wiley
Mouse Mess by L. Riley
Mig the Pig by Colin & Jacqui Hawkins
If You Give a Pig a Pancake by J. Numerof
Are You My Mummy? By S. Crimi
Growing Pumpkins by Melvin Berger
Mrs. Sweeney’s and Mrs. Keady’s Class
During October the Kindergarten was a very busy place! We concluded our unit of Mother Goose rhymes by writing and illustrating our own Humpty Dumpty rhymes. Our phonics and writing skills are certainly progressing well! We finished with “The Humpty Dumpty Challege” in which each team had to work together to design and build a wall to safely support Humpty Dumpty. We are proud to report that not a single egg was broken! We published a book about the “Humpty Dumpty Challenge”, too.
Our artist of the month was Henri Matisse. We practiced our cutting skills as we “drew with scissors” just like Matisse. We were very proud to see our masterpieces hanging in the hallway.
Halloween was lots of fun! We learned about bats and spiders. We made ghost centerpieces and read lots of Halloween stories.
We were very disappointed to have our field trip to Wards Berry Farm rained out TWICE! But Alexandra’s family (Eagle Farms) gave us pumpkins so that we could do lots of pumpkin activities. We checked to see if they could float and then weighed and measured them. After estimating how many seeds were in our huge class pumpkin, we carved it into a jack-o-lantern. We used our math skills to figure the best way to count all the seeds. Our pumpkin had 538 seeds! We baked pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie. Of course we published a book about all our pumpkin fun!
Throughout the month we continued to add words to our word wall, write every day, and further our math skills.
October was fun, but just wait until you see what we do in November!