Library Books

As the end of the school year approaches, Mrs. Stayer has asked that all media center materials, including library books, be returned by Friday, May 30.

Our next scheduled visit to the media center it is next Monday, but if all library books can be returned by this Friday it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much in advance!

Kindergarten Picnic

A flyer was sent home last week announcing the 2014 Kindergarten Picnic! The picnic is our end-of-the-year celebration, as we do not have a traditional kindergarten graduation ceremony.

As a reminder, the picnic will be held next Friday, June 6. All families should arrive to our classroom by 11:30 AM so that the children can share their kindergarten memory book with you. After a brief time in the classroom, we will be going outside so that the children can sing a few songs to their families!

After the children have finished singing, all of the kindergarten families will be able to have a special picnic with their kindergartner on the grass behind our playground. Please bring any blankets that you would like to use, as well as your child's favorite lunch to enjoy with you!

Please let me know how many family members will be attending so that I can ask for extra chairs for our classroom if necessary.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I have really enjoyed working with you and your children this year and look forward to seeing everyone next Friday, June 6!

Book Fair

This week your kindergartener brought home their wish list for the spring book fair. The kindergartners were able to look at all of the different books available while they were in the media center with Mrs. Stayer.

If you would like your child to purchase any of the books on their wish list or any other books from the book fair, the book fair will be open for business before and after school. 

If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you advance!

Note from Mr. Price

Dear Parents,

           

Harlan’s BINGO Field Day is on Tuesday June 3^rd, 2014. Students will travel around to different stations which will be led by parent volunteers. Parents will mark off the particular station number on the students BINGO board when students have completed the station. The student’s task is to have their entire BINGO board filled out while displaying the Harlan Habits the entire time. J

           

The first grouping of Field Day will represent Kindergarten, 1^st and 2^nd grade students from 9:30A.M. - 11:15A.M. The second grouping will be Mrs. Priebe’s students, Mrs. McKinney’s students, and all 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th graders from 1:15P.M. – 2:45P.M. The 5^th grade challenge will be from 3:00P.M. - 3:30P.M.

If you would like to be a parent volunteer or a volunteer to fill up water balloons on 6/2, please use the sign up genius link below or contact Mr. Price.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4AADAD28A4F49-2014

Thanks for all your help!  This event cannot occur without the help and support of others. Please consider signing up. J Your children would love to see you run a station.

Tim Price – TP04BPS@birmingham.k12.mi.us

Greg DuMont

Physical Educators of Harlan Elementary

Plants

We recently completed our science unit on plants! We learned all about the parts of a plant and what they do. We learned that the roots of a plant hold it in the ground and also act like straws to soak up all of the water and nutrients in the soil. The stem helps to keep the plant tall and also brings the water from the roots up to the flower. Leaves are used to take in sunlight, while flowers hold seeds inside of them.

We also learned about the life cycle of a plant. We learned that from a seed a plant will begin to sprout and grow roots. It will then begin growing, producing leaves and eventually a flower. Inside of the flower are more seeds, which are dropped as the flower begins to die. These new seeds start the whole process over again!

For our unit, we made plant models out of paper towel tubes, grew different kinds of flowers in our grow light and then donated them to a local assisted living facility, and grew beans in plastic bags.

Our favorite experiment where the beans in the bags. We did this by adding wet paper towel into a Ziploc bag with four beans inside. We did not add dirt, since we wanted to see what was happening as seeds grow underground. A roll of staples across the middle of the bag created what we called the "upstairs beans, "and the "downstairs beans."  We did this to see which beans would grow faster: the beans that were at the bottom where more water had collected, or the beans across the middle that relied on only the damp paper towel. We then placed our bags on the windows to see what will happen.

We are happy to say that we successfully grew beans without dirt! While not everyone's beans grew, we all agreed that as long as a few bags changed, we would all be able to see the plants grow in the "invisible dirt."

After a little more than two weeks, here are our results:

This bag showed us how many roots had come from the beans. We noticed that these roots all came from an "upstairs bean," and it's roots had grown down to the bottom of the bag to collect as much water as possible.

This bag was an excellent example of a bean that had opened and began growing a sprout.

This sprout was almost growing out of the bag! It has even begun growing leaves!

Finally, here is a bag that shows the roots, sprouts, and leaves all in one bag!

We had a lot of fun doing this experiment! It turns out, the "upstairs beans" grew much better than the "downstairs beans!" Most of the ones on the bottom rotted in the excess water! Guess that goes to show you that you should never over water your plants!

Mystery Reader

Thank you so much to Brian B. for joining us in Room 100 as our mystery reader last week!  The children loved the story, and loved asking questions about reading!

NO SCHOOL on Monday, May 26

This is a gentle reminder that there is no school next Monday, May 26 due to Memorial Day. 

School will resume on Tuesday, May 27. 

Fish Adoption

Starting next week our classroom animals will slowly be taken to their summer homes. I am currently looking for a "forever home" for our remaining two freshwater, tropical fish and clam. If you are interested in adopting Pinky, Low and Clammy please let me know.

Thank you in advance!

Specials Schedule for the Week

Monday (C) - PE

Tuesday (D) - PE and Media Center

Wednesday (A) - Art

Thursday (B) - Music

Friday (C) - PE

Step Throat

There has been a reported case of strep throat in our grade level. Please be on the lookout for symptoms in your child. Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Thank you in advance!

Popcorn Day

This is a gentle reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday, May 20, will be Popcorn Day. Each bag of popcorn will cost $.50.

Library Books

This is a gentle reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday, May 20, we will be visiting the media center. Please remember to return all library books to school tomorrow so that your child can take out a new book. 

Thank you in advance!

A little more lice...

Please keep checking your children for lice as we have had another case in our grade level. If you have any questions, please let me know. 

A little more lice...

Please keep checking your children for lice as we have had another case in our grade level. If you have any questions, please let me know. 

Mystery Reader

Today we were treated to two books from one if our favorite series, Fly Guy! Thank you so much for bringing one of our favorite characters to Room 100, Melinda W!

If you are interested in becoming a Mystery Reader, please see the list of available dates on our SignUp Genius on the left side of our blog. 

Field Trip Reminder

Please remember to send your kindergartener to school on Monday wearing their class shirt. 

We will be at Cranbrook from 12 - 3 on Monday, May 12. 

Chaperones will be contacted today regarding directions to meet us there. 

More Lice...

While this has still not made it to Room 100 yet, please be on the lookout for lice on your kindergartener. If you notice lice, please notify the office as soon as possible. 

Thank you in advance!

Another Case of Lice

There has been another case of lice reported in our grade level. While these cases have not been in our classroom, the office is encouraging all families to be diligent in checking for symptoms with their children. 

If you have any questions, please let me know. 

Lice

A case of lice has been reported in our grade level. While the case is not from our classroom, it is important that you are aware of this so that you can be on the lookout for symptoms. 

If you have any questions, please let me know. 

Thank you advance!

Wednesday Schedule

This is a gentle reminder that there is NO SCHOOL tomorrow morning for kindergarteners due to Kindergarten Visitation.  I will meet you and your child at the front door of the school at 12:30pm.

Please also remember to wear your kindergarten class shirts (turquoise and white) for the field trip.

Please remember that this Service Learning Field Trip is separate from next week's Cranbrook Science Center Field Trip. For tomorrow, we will not be needing any chaperones or fees.  For next week's trip, I will be contacting our chaperones tomorrow.  Since we can only take three chaperones and more that are interested, I would like to give the parents who have not been able to join us yet this year a chance to come in our last field trip.  Again, I will contact you regarding chapeones for next week's field trip tomorrow.

Have a wonderful morning off.  Can you believe that it has been a whole year since you visited Harlan for your child's Kindergarten Visitation?  :)

What an Amazing Day!

I want to give ALL of the kindergarteners a giant compliment for today!  I was so impressed with each and every one of them as they really were the best versions of themselves all day long.   The difference was seen and heard in everything we did today.

Thank you so much for the support from home on making good choices.  I am so proud of our home-school connection in Room 100!

Keep up the great work, kindergarteners!

Schedule for the Week of 5/5 - 5/9

Monday (A) - Art
Tuesday (B) - Music
Wednesday (C) - PE
Thursday (D) - PE and Media Center
Friday (A) - Art

Important Information to Remember

Wednesday, May 7: NO SCHOOL for Kindergarteners in the morning. 
In the morning, Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Singer and I will be having our kindergarten visitations for the incoming kindergarteners.   Please remember that any siblings not in kindergarten will still have a full day of school. Unfortunately, there will not be Kids Club once the regular school starts, so child care will need to be found outside of school for the morning.

When arriving in school for the afternoon, please wait outside the school's front doors until 12:30.  I will meet you there at that time.

Wednesday, May 7: Service Learning Field Trip in the afternoon.
We will be visiting a local assisted living facility to deliver the plants and flowers we have been growing in our classroom.  We will also be performing songs for the residents. 

Wednesday, May 7: Harlan Artfest in the evening.  6:00 - 7:30pm
Come join Harlan as we celebrate the wonderful artistic achievements that the students have made this year!  Each student will have several pieces of their artwork on display for parents to see.  Treats will be served as well!  I hope to see you there!

"Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better."

This is a quote from one of our favorite books that we have read this year, Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes.  In this story, Lilly, a kindergarten-age mouse can't wait to show off her new purple plastic purse and all of the goodies she has inside. Throughout the day, Lilly tries to share what she brought, but has a hard time following directions and completing tasks because of her excitement.  Her teacher, Mr. Slinger, gently reminds her several times to think about her choices.  After many redirections, Mr. Slinger has to take the purse away from Lilly to help her concentrate and not distract her classmates.

In our classroom, we also had a difficult day today.  Though many students continued to follow our Harlan Habits of Respect, Responsibility and Kindness, several others needed those gentle reminders and redirections.  Unfortunately, these choices continued throughout the day, with few attempts at making different choices. This included not following directions, not telling the truth, taking things that didn't belong to us, not sharing, using unkind words and actions and not completing the assigned activities.

I spoke with my friends in Room 100 several times today about what we shoud do if someone near you is not making a good choice and here is what the kindergarteners came up with:

"Show them what they should be doing by following directions ourselves."
"Ask them to turn their voices down."
"Use our silent hand gestures to remind friends of their choices."
"Help those in our group who are off task by reminding them of what we should be doing."

After returning to our classroom from the media center, we decided, as a class, that we needed to end on a better note.  We all agreed that we should start the day over, even for the last 45 minutes.  We even put our hands in a circle and cheered "Room 100" all together!  I am happy to say that the end of our day was much better.

Please take a few minutes this weekend to discuss good choices in school.  I truly believe that today was an "off day", and not the usual behavior for our classroom.  As I told my friends when they left, we will start fresh on Monday.  Everyone can have a hard day, but we need to think about what made it hard and how we can make different choice to make the next day better.

Thank you and have a wonderful weekend!

 

Mr. Slinger and Lilly

Mystery Reader

Last Friday our class was treated to a wonderful story by our mystery reader Jeff C!  Thank you so much for joining us and answering all of our questions about the story and about you as a reader!

If you are interested in being a mystery reader, please visit our blog and click on the sign-up genius on the left hand side.