Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had a very busy week in school preparing for many exciting holiday activities which we will finish next week. The students have written focused paragraphs on specific holidays they celebrate in their own families as well as a piece on Lucia, a Swedish holiday traditionally celebrated on December 13th each year. Ask your child to explain this special holiday and the significance and symbolism of lights. Lucia also has a special connection to Sicily, an island outside Italy. Ask your child to explain. Next week, your child will have the opportunity to create a craft for different holidays around the world as he/she will rotate between the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms for our special “Holidays around the World Celebration.” We will learn about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Chinese New Year among many other holidays. Look for these special products next week!

The students also had the opportunity to attend the 1st and 2nd grade Holiday Concert this week. The first and second grade students sang songs from many different countries around the world and even performed some amazing dances. Please look for audio files from this concert in the days to come. They will be posted on the blog as was the song “Locomotion”, performed by the HCS Jazz Band on 12/11/09.

The students also received a special package from our Swedish pen pals this week. They each received individual holiday cards, letter and special gifts. As a class, we also received a Photo-album, filled with pictures from their school and surrounding areas. This book was very special to me as I attended this school myself as a 4th, 5th, and 6th grader. We also got an adorable little magnet moose with a Swedish scarf, which now “lives” on our whiteboard. Lastly, we received a book about Swedish holiday traditions and customs.

We started working on our presents to our pen pals this week and hope to send the package by the end of this week. We will send our Swedish friends a 2010 calendar with pictures from Vermont, a small VT license plate magnet, and VT candy (maple sugar and Lake Champlain chocolates). Each student also wrote a postcard to his/her pen pal. Each student received a postcard, depicting a different scene from Vermont. The writing of the postcard had to reflect the picture and tell something about it. For example, one student wrote about Mount Mansfield, another about Lake Champlain. We also had students write about Church Street and Burlington, covered bridges, cows, and Morgan horses. Some postcards depicted the map of Vermont so we were able to gather data and specific information, and some postcards illustrated the seasons. We wrote about apple blossoms in the Spring, green mountains in the summer time, vibrant colors in the fall and snow-covered fields in the winter. We hope that these postcards will become a visual representation and introduction to this great state! We hope they will like our project and gifts.

Lastly, thank you for responding to the survey regarding reading this newsletter on the blog. Your child will still write the letter to you inside the Weekly Update Notebook. This notebook must still be signed by a parent before it’s returned. Simply sign your name below your child’s letter (most of you did that already anyway!) Please be advised that the weekly newsletter will always be posted on Fridays, provided that no technology-related challenges occurred. Thank you!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack