Valentine's Day!

We will have our Valentine’s Day celebration in our classroom on Friday, February 13th.  The children are invited to bring in a valentine for each of their classmates.  Please have your child prepare a valentine for every child in our room so that all are included.  A copy of the class list will come home in your child's folder.  Please address all of the envelopes before bringing them to school.  Children are asked not to send in valentines containing food or candy.

The children will decorate Valentine’s Day bags at school and will “deliver” their valentines to their friends. The children may bring their valentines to school starting on February 11.

One initiative I wanted to bring to your attention is the Share Your Heart campaign which raises funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.  This program was started by Peter and Jodi Augustini.  I am fortunate to know the Augustini family very well as I had two of their three children in my classroom.  As some of you may know, Jodi sadly lost her battle with cancer a few years ago.  With the help of some of Peter and Jodi’s friends, the Share Your Heart campaign has continued in Jodi’s name.  Information about it can be found in Memorial's Thursday Packet at this link:  

Share Your Heart

The campaign offers the sale of wooden hearts which can be used at Valentine’s Day for crafts or for actual valentines themselves.  I am bringing this to your attention so that you might consider a way to use the hearts as valentine’s or for any other project you might find them useful for.  The hearts can be ordered through the website listed above and will be sent home in your child’s backpack should you place an order.  Consider this a “heads up” and invitation only.  If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. 

Best wishes for a happy Valentine’s Day!

Let It Snow!

Well it certainly has been an eventful week snow-wise!  The children returned to school today with wonderful reports of playing in giant snow piles, building forts and having snowball fights.  They also enjoyed getting out to recess today to jump into the giant snowdrifts left behind by the plows.  All good!

As a reminder, now that winter has actually arrived, please send your child into school with boots, snow pants, mittens/gloves, hats, etc.  Children are invited to play in the snow at recess if they have ALL of these items, otherwise they need to stay on the hardtop (which isn't nearly as fun).

Also, cold season is definitely upon us.  We have had a symphony of coughs and runny noses here in Room 10 these past few weeks.  We are working hard to remember to turn away from others, and cover our mouths when we cough and sneeze so we don't spread our germs around.  I would appreciate any reminders at home about this!  

Enjoy the snow and stay warm!

Holiday Giving Project

Many thanks to everyone for contributing to our food drive for the Medfield Food Cupboard.  Mrs. Marble, who coordinates the drives for the food cupboard, came in today to pick up our goodies.  She was thrilled to have so much to take back with her.  It was a successful team effort.  Thank you!

Introducing Scratch Jr.

Last week the children and I joined Mrs. Groden in the library for an HOUR OF CODE.  We learned about the app SCRATCH JR. which teaches how to do simple coding (programming) on the iPad.  We all loved it, learned a lot and were amazed by how simple it could be to code something.  This is a free app.  I would encourage you to download it on a home device and let your first grader show you how it works.  Here are a few pictures highlighting our hour of high-tech learning.

Learning About Veterans Day

This morning we attended a special Veterans Day program.  We were visited by Chief Wilson a member of the Navy, and Cadet Wilson who is beginning his work with the Army.  They are a mother / son team who have visited Memorial for the past several years around Veterans Day.  The children learned more about the five branches of the US military, including the important jobs our armed services members are doing in times of war and peace.  We sang songs and learned how to stand at attention.  This is always a high interest program.  I hope your first grader has lots to tell you about what we learned at this program and in the classroom.