Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It looks as if winter has finally arrived and hopefully it is here to stay for a little while. The students were so excited to go out and play in the first snow this week. As the weather gets colder, please remember to send your child to school with warm clothing as we have recess every day. Warm jackets, gloves and boots are preferred. If your child wishes to bring in snow-pants as well for extra winter fun activities outside at recess, he/she can certainly do so. Please talk to your child about the importance of not sharing clothing as we have had a reappearance of head lice in the ¾ wing. Thank you!

In the month of December, the students will read the ten nominated books for the Red Clover Awards. The Red Clover Award was created in 1995 by Vermont's Windham County Reads, a non-profit literacy organization dedicated to bringing families and books together. Ten books are nominated every year, and school-age children vote on their favorite. The ten books will be read aloud to the whole class, and students will receive a writing response to each book. After the ten nominated books are read, they will vote on their favorite and these results will be entered into this Vermont-based book competition.
For more information, please click here for more information on this great program and this year's nominations.

Our scientific inquiries continue in Ecology. This week, we learned about ocean habitats. Ask your child to explain the differences between the shorelines and the coral reefs and how animals survive there. Also ask your child to explain how the “Light Zones” and the “Dark Zones” of the ocean differ. Our five new vocabulary words for next week are posted on the Wiki and should be in your child’s homework folder this week. They are: food web, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore and energy.

In an effort to stream-line and make the classroom as efficient as it can be, I would like to have your feedback on how important it is that this newsletter is sent home to you in paper form versus simply reading it every week on the blog. Please fill out the survey below and return to me sometime next week and let me know if you are willing to only access the electronic copy posted on the blog. The situation would be similar to the posting of the Viking and my newsletter would be posted on Fridays.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack