Weekly Update

Dear Families,

What a wonderful Science Fair we had this week! Thank you all for coming and thank you all for taking such a great interest in our budding scientists! Once again, we had the opportunity to focus our discussions on scientific inquiry skills and the importance of observational and testable data collections. I hope you and your child find many and varied situations and experiences over the summer when you can explore science together. Observe the birds when you go on a hike, collect various rocks and closely observe their make-up, or test how fast your bathing suit dries in the sun. Science is all around us. Make it a part of your life and make it fun!

Since the school year is quickly coming to an end, there are many end-of-the-year things we must address. First of all, many students have expressed a desire to continue their relationships with their Swedish pen-pals. Since I will not be your child’s teacher next year, this letter writing will occur outside of school. If your child can provide his/her home address to his/her pen-pal, please indicate this on the attached sheet. If you already signed this in school, you do not have to do so again. Thank you.
Secondly, many students had hoped that we could start a personalized font for Word on the computers this year. We were never able to create these fonts as it was rather costly for a whole class to do. If you wish to do this on your own, the web site I used in the past was www.yourfonts.com (Click here for link) Keep me posted if you use it. Keep in mind that your own font will not appear in an email unless the recipient has the same font (unlikely unless you install it on the receiving computer). In order for your hand-writing to appear, save the file as a jpeg, print screen or pdf. More information is available at the web-site. Good Luck!

The students and I are hosting a “Colonial Times in the 21st Century Breakfast” gathering next Wednesday, June 2nd between 7:30am-8:30am. An electronic sign-up has already been mailed out (and a paper-based sign-up is attached to this letter) as we hope to have some traditional Colonial breakfast foods along with more modern-day breakfast foods. We will show our online newspaper. The students will show their contributions on 4 computers. I will not link this until after the breakfast. The students worked very hard on it and they should be very proud of their hard work. Other teachers and staff have also been invited. We hope you can join us. Thank you.
Our end-of-the-year barbeque sign-up is on-line this year. Please let me know if you did not receive the email invitation. For those without an email account, paper-based letters and invitations were sent out. Please let me know if you did not receive these. Thank you.

I am still missing some permission slips for our field trip to Billings Farm and Museum on June 15th. Your child brought home extra slips this wee3k. Please return these by early next week.

As many of you already know, I accepted a job at the Allen Brook School in Williston. I will teach a multi-age 1st and 2nd grade class. I am very excited about this new venture and look forward to the new school year already!! I hope we will all stay in touch next year….and something tells me we will through the wonders of technology (I have many ideas already!). I wish you and your family the best of luck next year and I will miss you all very much. Your support throughout this year has been greatly appreciated and your willingness to embrace technology across the curriculum has been amazing. Thank you for all that you have done, and still do, to help your child learn.

Have a wonderful long weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack