February+8,+2009

Hi Everyone, What a great week we just finished. The kids did an OUTSTANDING job presenting their Road to the Revolution skits. The goal for the skits was for the students to embody the events that led up to the American Revolution, and I think each and every group did just that. Performing skits not only gets the body involved in the education, but it helps to concrete the information into the brain. Anytime a lesson can be presented away from the standard of reading from a book, the students will gain more knowledge of the events being taught. I have been working diligently to get the videos on Trubyville. I haven’t sent a large video file over the net before, so I have had a huge learning curve this week. I think it is very important to publish children’s work, especially when they work as hard as the kids did last week. Please keep checking back on Trubyville to see if your child’s video has made it to our Wiki. There are many important dates coming up n the February calendar. Here is a summary: Valentine Balloon order forms were due in the office last Friday. If you did not get your request in, contact the office to see if you can still send it in or send it with your child tomorrow and we will see if they will take it. A request form is on the main page of the TIS website. Canned Food Drive – Feb. 9-13 Thursday, Feb 12 – 5th Grade Program in the Upper school Auditorium – 7:00 - Visit Mr. Dary’s homework page for more info. Friday, Feb. 13 – Valentine Party – 2:30-3:00 – Mrs. Robinson is in charge of the planning for the party. Monday, Feb. 16 – No School Tuesday, Feb. 17 – Middle School Shadowing – 8:30 – 11:30 (roughly) The students will get to spend a morning with the 6th graders getting a feel for what next year will be like. Wednesday, Feb. 18 – Casual Picture Day Friday, Feb. 27 – Optional Conference Day Reading  :  We did finish our novel __Chasing Vermeer__ and we will move on to another novel titled __Regarding the Fountain__. It is a whimsical book that is written in letter writing form. We will take this opportunity to hone our letter writing skills throughout this book. Social Studies : We also finished chasing Choco, our chocolate monster, across the United States. The children learned about many famous landmarks in the US and learned how to navigate using the highways and interstates of this great country. Next time you take a driving trip, see if they can help you navigate. Science: Our next unit in Science will be dealing with electricity. Our culminating activity will be to build a flashlight out of basically trash. We will need some empty toilet paper tubes. Please save them and send them in whenever you can. Well, I had better get back to editing my videos. I have 2 finished and only 7 more to go! Thanks for all your love and support. Your kind interactions are what make teaching at TIS so great! Kelly