March!

Hi everyone!

We are quickly approaching Spring Break which means the last months of the school year! All of the students have been doing a great job, and I hope everyone has a great Spring Break!

Monthly Theme:

This month, we have been wrapping up our space projects, and will be sending those to you soon. Each student had a planet on which they did research and created a presentation. Students had to record themselves on each slide. They are doing a great job! We will hopefully have them ready to send out by the end of this week!

For the month of March, our unit is weather. We have been learning some vocabulary words about weather including precipitation, and meteorologist. We will continue to add more vocabulary. We have also been graphing the weather for the days we have been together. If you would like to, students can graph the weather over spring break. Please let me know if you would like a copy of the graph. We will continue this and use it to work on skills for reading a graph. There will be upcoming projects and assignments that we will complete, such as a cloud activity and a rainy day poem. For cooking group, we will make turkey and eggplant meatballs to associate with "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." 

STUDENT COUNCIL SPIRIT DAY ~ FRIDAY, MARCH 24TH

Our next Ivy Hall spirit day will be Friday, March 24th. It will be HAT DAY. Please wear a hat to school, you can use your creativity to create a hat or wear a hat you already own. 

Please check out the Principal's Message for other information you will need.

Allowance:

We have begun an allowance chart to show the students they have more connected to their morning and afternoon jobs. We will use the classroom money they earn as a means for the students to "buy" snack. If they have done their job, they will earn money at the end of the week to purchase snack. They keep their wallets near their schedules and practice purchasing and interacting with someone at a store, as well as using fine motor to retrieve and put away money. So far, the students have done a great job, and love getting in line to buy their snacks!

As always, please e-mail me if you have any questions, and ready Mrs. Gluck's principal message for up to date information. Thank you!

February

Hi everyone!

I can't believe we are over the halfway point in February! This year is really flying by!

Field Museum
Everyone did a great job on our field trip to the Field Museum! There was so much to see, and we had limited time, so we narrowed our scope to the dinosaur exhibits because that was what our monthly theme was all about for January. Everyone really loved seeing Sue the Dinosaur, as well as some of the other recreations of the dinosaurs on which they did their projects.

Monthly Theme
This month, our theme is outer space. We have begun talking about gravity as well as things/objects you see in space. We are discussing how big space is, and how we are so far away from everything up there. We will be talking about the phases of the moon and use oreos to do so. We will also be completing a planet project.  Each student will be creating a presentation about their planet. More to come on that later!

Reminder on Library Books
If you can please make sure you send your student's books back to school for our library time on Friday, it would be greatly appreciated.

Spirit Day
Our next spirit day is Friday, February 24, and it is "Dress Up Fancy" day. 

Lots of information

This post will have a lot of information from the principal's message regarding Valentine's Day, upcoming events, and other fun info!

HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT COMING SOON

During the 2016-2017 school year, Human Growth and Development will be taught to all third, fourth, and fifth grade students. The unit will be three days long and will begin February 1 and will deal primarily with the informational aspects of human growth and development. Instruction will be provided by our physical education teachers trained to teach our district’s program. Classes will meet for three, 30-minute sessions during your child's Physical Education period and will be taught by a same sex physical education teacher. Should you need further clarification on the objectives of the program, which were distributed during the week of registration, please contact Mrs. Gluck.

SPIRIT DAY- JANUARY 27TH

Our next spirit day will be color day on January 27th. Each grade level will wear a designated color. Please represent your grade level by wearing the color listed below next Friday. 

1st Grade- Red 

2nd Grade- Yellow

3rd Grade- Black 

4th Grade- Green 

5th Grade- Blue 

We will wear black as we are banded with 3rd grade.

VALENTINE'S DAY

Please look at teacher’s newsletters for class specific guidelines about sending Valentine’s to school. If you choose to include an item with your child's Valentines, please note that only non-food items are permissible.  Candy, snacks, or any sort of food item will be sent back home with your child on Valentine's day if sent to school.  Non-food items are permitted, and there are many pre-packaged Valentines that can be purchased that include a trinket (i.e., pencil, erasers, book mark, etc.). Card and party stores are a great place to look for these types of items.  Here are some ideas of non-food items if you choose to include something:  pencils, erasers, stickers, plastic or rubber figurines, mini deck of cards, spinning top, or crazy straws to name a few.

Many of our students have medically based dietary restrictions and this does not include students on specific diets of family choice such as vegetarian, low cal/sugar, religious, and so on.  Monitoring the individual needs and requests is not feasible, thus not safe. In addition it is frequently reported that several children eat Valentine's treats on the bus, as evidenced by an abundance of wrappers found.  This poses a choking risk, as well as exposure for students with specific health restrictions. Thank you for your assistance in helping us maintain the health, safety, and personal family preferences of our students.

Field Trip

A reminder to please send back permission slips for the field trip to the Field Museum. The cost is $8.88 and checks should be made payable to Ivy Hall School.

Monthly Theme

We are continuing work with our monthly theme. We will be working on our dinosaur research projects!! Each student will fill in a report about their dinosaur and present it to our class.