Happy Birthday, UES!

This past week has been filled with lots of excitement for UES' 75th anniversary.  Students have been engaged in learning about school life in 1939 this week as they prepared for the lantern parade.  We have seen vintage clothing and artifacts from the 30's and 40's, watched a slideshow showing some history of UES, and tomorrow, all classes will put something in the time capsule to be opened by future students.  Thanks to all the parents for help making lanterns with Kristina and Gowri and also for coming up for the parade last night.  There were about 1000 students, staff, and parents, led by the pulsing Brazilian samba drums of Sambatucada that paraded in a beautiful line up to the college last night.  It was a magical night complete with fireworks to celebrate our school's 75th anniversary. 

Link to 75th Birthday Slideshow

Animals in Us

We've been working diligently on our new song of the month about animals.  It's quite complex (written by all the Kinders), so if you'd like to help your child become more familiar with the words, feel free to help them master it at home.  There is a link to both the words and the music.  Have FUN!


Link for SONG "Animals in Us"

Link for LYRICS "Animals in Us"



Also, please mark your calendars for our Kindergarten Performance on April 16th in the early evening.  This is an amazing night where students will share their music as a grade and take you through some of their learning about famous artists.

February Math

Although they're not smiling (I haven't been great about getting good pictures), we really have been loving working with number bonds these last few weeks. "Number Bonds" if your child hasn't already shared with you help kids see that numbers can be broken into parts to make computation easier.  Students are learning to see the relationship between numbers through this model.  Ask your child about our stories we've incorporated into this, especially that of squirrels hiding their nuts!  Above, students were working with different groups of pattern blocks to show the amounts of each and then how many total there were.  As students begin to see this relationship, they are starting to put these parts into a "number sentence" and learning about the meaning of an = sign.  Everybody is starting to become familiar and flexible in how to use this equal sign in a variety of positions.  

We have been playing many math games during our "math work places" time.  Many games are building students fluency with subatizing 20 frames and building their understanding of teen numbers.  INQUIRE with your child a faster way to count cards like these without counting by 1's.  

Students have also been practicing naming and writing numbers before and after in a variety of partner games and group white board work, comparing groups of numbers, and counting on from a variety of numbers.  

Friendship Day

Friday was filled with friendly smiles, warm laughs, and cheery attitudes toward each other. What a great day to appreciate great friends, teacher and all who make our learning community a success!

Thank you to all parents who shared a healthy snack for our afternoon celebration!

Potential Yoga in the Classroom

I am looking into the possibility of incorporating Yoga into our day and am interested in getting your feedback.  Becky Crandell, is a trained child yoga teacher who is interested in working with classrooms and teachers.  The cost of the 8 sessions would be $150 and I am wondering if there would be enough parents interested in donating money towards this program.  If you would be willing to support this integration of yoga into the classroom, please complete the survey on the side of the blog.  If you want more information, visit this site  Yoga Info

Information about Becky, taken from the website, http://www.gratefulyogavt.com/

Becky started doing yoga as a child, and yoga has been a part of her life ever since.  She made her career in education, teaching preschool and kindergarten for over 20 years, incorporating yoga, brain-gym, sensory motor activities and mindfulness into her daily practice with children.  Becky approaches her work with children with humor and a light-hearted touch.  As a certified classroom teacher and special educator, she also holds certification in ChildLight Yoga, Radiant Child Yoga and is a Yoga4Classrooms trainer as well.

UES Lantern Parade

 Wednesday February 18th @ 6:00pm


Union Elementary School invites the entire Montpelier community to celebrate the 75th anniversary of our school building! Please join us for an evening lantern procession on Wednesday, February 18th.


Our lantern procession will begin at 6:00 pm at Union Elementary School. Led by the samba band Sambatucada, we will parade from the school to the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we will celebrate on the VCFA Green with rainbow ice sculptures, live music by Sambatucada, and hot cider and cocoa. This is the main event of our first-ever UES Winter Carnival, which will take place the week of Monday, February 16 through Friday, February 20.




Sambatucada leading the Waterbury River of Light Parade. Photo courtesy of Gowri Savoor


Local artist Gowri Savoor is guiding UES students in making their lanterns during a ten day art residency, thanks to the “Artists in Schools” grant awarded by the Vermont Arts Council as well as the support of the UES Parents’ Group and The River of Light in Waterbury. All K-5 students will create a hand-made lantern from sustainable materials including willow and tissue paper. Lanterns will be suspended from bamboo poles and lit with battery operated LED lights.


Our parade is made possible with the support of the Vermont College of Fine Arts and Coldwell-Banker Classic Properties. The event is funded in part by a “Community Arts Grant” awarded by Montpelier Alive and funded by the Downtown Improvement District Assessment. We thank Diamond & Robinson P.C. Attorneys at Law for their support. We also thank Lake Champlain Chocolates and Champlain Orchards for their donations.

Deep Snow

We hoped for the sun at morning meeting, and out it came!  This afternoon was a perfect day to be outside enjoying the fresh air, fresh snow, and sunshine.  We hiked up the back ridgeline to the forest, and enjoyed learning and teaching about our VT animal to our buddy from Mrs. Koch's class.  Students paired up for an afternoon of discussion, exploration, building, and of course, sliding! 

Animal Song of the Month

Mr. Boffa stopped by this morning to teach us a brief music lesson and to see how we were doing learning our song, Animals In Us.

100!

We did it! We made it to Day 100!

After reading our morning message during morning meeting, a note magically appeared. After reading the letter, we took a magical and exciting adventure through our school tracking the numbered steps Herman 100, a dragon very fond of the number 100, took around UES to get to Mr. Hennessey's office. It was thrilling - and again we counted and read numbers all the way to 100! Herman 100 is a very special dragon who happens to be very fond of the number 100 and loves to get involved in celebrating Kindergartners special 100th day of school. Herman Hundred graciously left us a prize for tracking him down - a goodie bag with a 100 day pencil and $100 for each of our friends who counted all the way to 100!

Upon returning to the classroom, students returned to the classroom for a fully integrated "100 day" learning across the curriculum. During literacy we read 100 day stories and say a 100 day song. We read 100 books collectively and even read a story about groups of animals at a zoo that totaled 100!

During math we wrote and counted forwards and backwards to 100 and made a cereal necklace - completed with 100 pieces of cereal!  We had fun counting our 100 day collection!

Counting to 100 Macarena

Counting to 100

Can your child count to 100? If not, please help them practice and building fluency to 100 and beyond!  Use these links to have fun practicing this time consuming numeracy skill!

Flu Season

This notice just came in  from the nurse.  It is flu season, there are symptoms going around, and possible cases in the UES community.  Please be mindful and review this pamphlet from the CDC on FLU information.

FLU INFO FROM CDC - please read!

VALENTINE’S DAY

We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day on Friday, February 13th. We will focus on the ways that people care for each other, and the importance of good friends.

· If your child wants to bring Valentine Cards, please have your child bring them for ALL of their classmates. Please 
help your child with their Valentine’s cards. Your child will bring home a class list with all the children’s names. This is a great opportunity for your child to practice writing names starting with uppercase and using lower case for all the other letters. Working on a few cards each day helps keep this activity fun. Go ahead and start early!

· Homemade cards are great too!

· Please, no candy!

· We will be having a special afternoon snack too - would somebody like to donate strawberries or something festive and healthy?!  If so, let me know!

Enjoy this season of love!

                               

  

ECO Change of DATE!

Due to a team professional development curriculum meeting I have to attend on Thursday afternoon, ECO for this week has been rescheduled to Wednesday afternoon, February 11th. If you can join us, please let me know!

Ezra Jack Keats

Students take a few minutes to explore each of Ezra Jack Keats famous stories.
Books are passed around the story to give students a quick preview of all his work.  

This past week, students were introduced to a new author that we'll be studying for the next few weeks- Ezra Jack Keats. Through an online website, students were introduced to him and learned about his early life, struggles as an artist, and how he became so famous. Students were given a preview on Monday about the kind of books he writes, where he gets his ideas, and about the characters that appear and play a key role in many of his award winning books. Learning about the caldecott medal has sparked many children to seek out other books in our library that have earned this great honor. 

During this unit, some books are read once, while others are read 2-3 times. During this author study, students will focus on the literary elements to help them think about the texts being read. Everybody has had an opportunity to hear and talk about quality literature through Ezra Jack Keat's books. While listening to E.J.K books students have had conversations about the characters, problem, and solution and we will continue doing this as we explore other titles and compare and contrast the story elements across the titles. Our main focus this past week has been to help the students understand the problem that the main characters face and the related solution that unfolds. In responding to this literature, students have been crafting complete sentences and writing a response to answer specific questions. Some of these responses have taken a creative approach, and children are developing alternative solutions to the problems that occur to the main characters. Through discussion, turn and talk, and planning our writing, students develop a better understanding of this complex literature. In addition, students have been making text to self and text to text connections to help them develop a deeper understanding of the stories. 

Vermont Animals

We are so lucky to have Melanie and Royce join us once a month for our 4 winds parent led science program! This month, they taught us a about squirrels! This helped launch our afternoon independent study on our own vermont animal. Inquire with your kindergartener what they learned about squirrels and one fact they learned about their own Vermont animal. Feel free to help your child do some at home investigations (perhaps on their next snow day!)

Tricky Teens

Mrs. Clements (MPS math coach)  joined us for a math lesson on "tricky teens" and helped our friends investigate groups of five/tens to see teen numbers. Students played a fun game involving red and white worm beads to help them practice adding numbers to groups of tens.

Guest Reader

Halie shared some of her (and my) favorites last week. Kids always find Leo Lionni and Mo Willems stories enjoyable!

100th Day Optional Activity for Home

My, how time flies! Monday, February 10th will mark our 100th day of school. We will celebrate by incorporating counting to 100 activities into our learning. Your children have been learning how to count to 100 by 10s and 1s. They are also learning how to group objects by 10s.

You can help by having your child find 100 things around the house to bring in on Monday. It could be anything (cereal, pasta, toothpicks, buttons, stickers, marbles, pennies) just put the collection in a zip-loc baggie and send it to school. You get the idea…

Song Writing Residency

Did you know you can write a song about almost anything? Songwriter and musician Paul Boffa joined our class last week for session one of a songwriting residency the Kindergarten teachers arranged with each class this month. Together we will write one song about Vermont Animals. The final song will be performed by students during the Kindergarten Art Show in April.

Our class is writing our own verse to contribute.  Students contributed individually by sharing what they know about what their own Vermont animal.  The process of writing a song begins with an idea, some details, rhyming words and a simple tune. Stay tuned and keep an ear out for this song to be sung at home by your Kindergartener!

NBNC field trip

Last week students enjoyed a fun filled morning exploring NOrth Branch Nature Center's grounds. Thanks to all the parents who helped guide students on a hike, through the critter room, and in and around the tree maze, igloos, and sculptures. Thanks also to the Montpelier City for helping with transportation!