Dear Kapok parents,
We hope you had a nice and peaceful Thanksgiving break. During the months of November and December Cultural Studies is the focus of our classroom. During the month of November we were busy learning about sharing, being thankful, how to give each other compliments and Thanksgiving.
Our harvest share event was very sweet and successful! It was a beautiful lesson on the process of food, services skills, table manners and internalizing what we are truly thankful for.
Kapoks loved making the “Stone Soup”, ask your child about it. Stone Soup is a popular European folktale that has been told and retold for centuries. Everywhere the tale is told, the plot ends with the optimistic realization that when each person makes a small contribution, the collective impact can be huge.
The version of Stone Soup we read in the classroom took place in a village where people learn about the pleasures of sharing. Kapoks worked very hard peeling and cutting to make our delicious and healthy “stone soup” to share with the other classrooms. I am proud to say that most Kapoks tried (some for the first time) raw vegetables! They tried onions, potatoes, carrots, celery and even a very small piece of ginger.
After days of reading and talking about the meaning of being thankful, we asked the children what were they truly and thankful for. Here are their answers…
Alice – Mom and Dad
Cecelia – Gymnastics
Aralynn – Mom, Dad and baby brother
Gabriella – Pizza
Scarlet – Mommy and Daddy
Beau – My cup (pointing at his glass cup)
Tiberius – Mommy and Daddy
Reef – Turkey
Summer – Mom and Dad
Charles – Pizza Friday
Cormac – The planet Earth
Jack – Turkey and Dinosaurs
Addyson – Mommy and Daddy
Alexander – having a cup to drink water
Isabella – Soup
Naia – My friends
Penelope – Mom
Leila – Mommy
Some Kapoks are still deciding what are they Thankful for.
We have also incorporated our Classroom jobs. Kapoks are very proud of being a productive part of the classroom. Ask your child about his/her job for the week. When meaningful tasks are assigned to students they understand and feel capable and responsible. Classroom jobs are a fundamental part of our classroom. The process of choosing a job is complex and starts with the Job descriptions, then comes the job applications (oral), here we include skills and past experience, based on that they might get the job or have to re-apply next week. If the job is not performed by the standard set then the agreement is broken and the classroom as a whole has to decided if the student can keep the job or should they be dismissed. Being unemployed is not fun!
Please don’t forget to sign up for Parent-Teacher conferences. Parent-Teacher conferences will be held on Monday December 5th, Wednesday December 7th and Friday December 9th.
Time for conferences has been divided into 25 minute intervals starting at 1:00pm and ending at 5:00pm.
Below you will find a link to Parent-Teacher Conference sign up sheet.
http://signup.com/go/Qzwd1a
Thank you
Ms. Marjorie and Ms. Karina
