It has been wonderful to get to know our exchange students from Mexico! It was great to have an all school skate on Monday. It was the first time skating for some students and many students showed great perseverance while learning. Thank you to the Sanderson PTO for paying for the rink/skate rentals and snacks!

Tuesday, February 7 - Exchange Students Leave

Wednesday, February 8 - 1:50 Dismissal

Thursday, February 9 - Report Cards sent home

Wednesday, February 15 - All School Meeting at 2:15

February 20 - 24 - February Vacation

February 21 - Sanderson Students Leave for Mexico

Link to Sanderson Academy calendar.

*** Please be aware that we have had a few confirmed cases of strep throat. If your child has a sore throat (especially with a fever) please keep them home and follow up with their pediatrician, strep throat requires at least 24 hours of antibiotic treatment before returning to school.

Symptoms of strep throat are pain when swallowing, a sore throat that comes on quickly, swollen lymph nodes, swollen and red throat with(or without) white patches, fatigue, nausea and loss of appetite.

Untreated strep throat can cause further health issues and is also more contagious so it is always recommended to treat strep with antibiotics***

Please see below for information on a vaccine clinic this Saturday at the Buckland town library:

Flu & COVID Vaccine Clinic

Buckland Public Library Saturday, Feb 4th 12-3 pm

30 Upper Street, Buckland

Register online at frcog.org/covid (recommended, although walk-ins will be welcome).

Get a free $75 gift card with any COVID vaccine or booster!

Bring your ID, insurance card, and vaccination card!

Anyone over 6 months old may be eligible for a flu and COVID vaccine, and can receive them at the same visit. Insurance card needed for flu vaccine. If uninsured, call a public health nurse at (413) 774-3167, or bring a $28 check.

All COVID vaccines/boosters are no-cost. A single Omicron specific (bivalent) booster is available to those 5+ who received any other COVID vaccine at least 2 months ago.

More information at https://frcog.org/project/vaccine-information/

This week we read and enjoyed Mouse Paint, by Ellen Stoll Walsh. The book is about three white mice finding paint while trying to stay away from a cat. The mice explore jars of primary colored paint and experiment with color mixing. As we read the book, preschoolers predicted which colors the mice would make, and experimented with color mixing themselves. We mixed primary colored finger paints to create new colors and compared our results to the book.

Our dramatic play area has become a wonderful bakery! It is a popular place during free play time. Our preschoolers take turns “baking”, taking orders, and serving a variety of lovely pretend treats.

We had a fun time with our third-grade buddies, making little groundhogs for groundhog day. We learned a song to sing while we “popped” our groundhogs out of decorated paper cups. Then we had a chance to be “groundhogs” with our buddies, crouching down and popping up out of a hoop encircled by colorful scarves. Here are the words to our song, sung to the tune of I’m a Little Teapot.

I’m a little groundhog, fuzzy and brown

See me POP as I look around,

If I see my shadow, down I’ll go,

Six more weeks of winter snow!

We had an awesome time ice skating on Monday! The class was so flexible on the trip, very brave trying the ice skating, and responsible to stay with the group and clean up after themselves in the crowded, busy waiting area. We did some more small group snowshoeing on Wednesday and visited the close woods on the other days—which is still an interesting combination of ice and muck! The kids have been enjoying pretending to be animals under the low hanging evergreen boughs, adding to their stick fort, and excavating the bark off of some fallen down logs.

We have recently started a new reading module entitled “Fossils Tell of Earth’s Changes’ and the first unit in this module focuses on the two guiding questions listed below:

1. What do paleontologists do?

2. How do characters respond to major events?

To introduce this unit, we started by reading a tongue twister called “She Sells Seashells” about a girl named Mary Anning. This tongue twister then led us to reading aloud a story about Mary Anning called Stone Girl, Bone Girl by Laurence Anholt, where Mary discovers the skeleton of the great Ichthyosaurus. After reading the story, we were introduced to strategies for answering multiple choice questions, such as covering the answer choices and trying to think of the answer ourselves and crossing out choices that we know are not correct. We also discussed the meanings of the terms perseverance (When something is hard, we keep trying and ask for help if we need it.) and initiative (We notice what needs to be done and we do it.) and then we shared examples of having perseverance and taking initiative as they connected to our own lives. Future questions that focus on Stone Girl, Bone Girl will have us identifying examples of Mary Anning showing perseverance and taking initiative.

During our math block, we continue to use the story Jack and the Beanstalk as a springboard for our math lessons. This week in math we used number lines to practice the addition strategy of “skip count by 10s”. For example, if Jack sold beans from his beanstalk at the local farmer’s market, and he sold 2 black beans worth 30 cents and one white bean worth 17 cents, we can use the number line to add 20+17. We start at 0 and make two jumps of 10 and then make one jump of 10 and 7 jumps of 1, landing at 37. This strategy then led us to solving additional problems such as 35+46, where we used an open number line, placing 46 at the beginning of the number line and then making three jumps of 10 and five jumps of 1 to arrive at the answer.

Third graders have been preparing for their trip on Thursday to the Norman Rockwell Museum this week. On Monday they each spent time with a guest from Mexico researching one of the paintings that we will see there. With their partner they shared what they learned with the whole class. They also continued working on writing Norman Rockwell stories based on one painting they chose. We also had a great time skating on Monday.

This week the students from Escuela Lomas Altas joined us on a field trip to the Beneski Museum of Natural History in Amherst. The fourth graders really enjoyed examining the different fossils and imaging what defense mechanisms the animal used when it was alive. A lot of questions were generated that we are looking forward to researching. Be sure to ask your kiddo about why I took a close up picture of them looking at the floor in the rocks and minerals wing of the building.

Fifth grade is working on a culminating project for our water cycle unit. Students are trying out different materials to pour dirty water through to see which ones work best for filtering water. They are creating plans, testing them, and then redesigning to see if they can improve their results.

The sixth grade had a great time on Monday ice skating. Some students by the end of the time were so much more comfortable on the ice. Many sixth graders used crates to help them stay steady on the ice. It was great seeing the older grades helping the younger kids and sharing crates to help each stay balanced. This week we’ve been cruising right along through our new book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. We’ve been discussing different methods an author may use to allow the reader to make inferences about the main character. We’ve also been discussing different forms of figurative language an author uses to add more detail to their writing. In math we have started a new unit “Let’s Be Rational” . We have started by reviewing what we already know about adding and subtracting fractions. Once we’ve refreshed our brains about those operations we’ll learn how to multiply and divide fractions.

Check out this link from The Math Learning Center! It connects you to TONS of math learning apps such as pattern shapes, number frames, and even a whiteboard. Explore and enjoy! :) aprew@mtrsd.org

For the past two weeks, first and second grade students have been learning about the Caldecott Award. Each year, a committee from the American Library Association gives the award to a picture book with the most outstanding illustrations, and they use a special criteria to consider each contending book. During class, we read several of the Caldecott “contenders” and pretended that we were the Caldecott Committee. Our criteria: Do the illustrations stand out in a special way? Do the illustrations say something that the words do not? Do you like the story? Does it deserve the medal? The students’ overall favorite was Hot Dog, by Doug Salati. To their delight, Hot Dog was actually chosen as the 2023 Caldecott winner!

Older students are practicing research skills. Third graders are using Destiny Discover (our online catalog) to research Massachusetts animals. Fourth through sixth graders will learn to navigate online databases as they research Massachusetts authors (4th grade), topics of their choice (5th grade), and possible future careers (6th grade). I’m excited to see what students find out!

Last, 3rd and 5th grade students took part in a live webinar with authors Grace Lin and Kate Messner, who recently collaborated on a picture book called Once Upon a Book. The authors gave a sneak preview of the book, talked about their writing process, and even taught students how to draw a rabbit, a character from the book that appeared on each page. The webinar ended with Q & A from the audience, where we learned how the authors became writers, what their favorite books are, and the best/hardest part about being an author. It was wonderful to watch students engage with such prominent authors/illustrators.