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November Newsletter

Lots of Good Times in Kaweah
Respect and care of the environment is one of the priorities at River.  IOOBY trips tie right into the teaching of these values. We have had two visits from Bree Bird and company so far.  On the first visit we talked about how to observe and learn from our journeys into Shollenberger.  All the students picked a nature name that represents a plant or animal we might see on our trips into the park.  Ask your child what his or her name is. We went into the park during the second meeting and the children found a special sit spot.  This will be their place to contemplate and enjoy the nature around them.  The gang drew the area and wrote about how it makes them feel.  We also learned a song about plants and a game about bats.  It was exciting to see coyote scat and a baby muskrat, plus lots of birds. Our next walking trip with IOOBY will be Friday November 18th.

The children have participated in many fun lessons centered around the Miwok culture.  We used websites on the computer to research the culture.  The children learned about the foods they eat, use of tule, games and weapons for hunting.  Our field trip to the American Indian museum really brought to life what we studied.  The children wrote about obsidian tools while learning how to compose a paragraph with a topic sentence and detail sentences. Our village is outside the classroom.  The children really want to add people so we will continue working on it until they feel it is complete.

Eeeek spiders!!!  We are so excited by all the cool things spiders do.  Ask your child about the Bolas spider or the Trapdoor spider, amazing creatures!!  As long as the children are interested we will study these arachnids.  Watch for directions on report writing connected to spider research.

Our art shelves have changed over the last couple of weeks.  Many new painting techniques have been introduced as we complete mini lessons on the great artists.  The children are splashing and dripping paint around as they learn about Jackson Pollack.  We are carefully applying dots as we try to paint like Seurat.  Soon we will again look at Andy Warhol and his repeated images of soup cans and shoes made famous in the 60's. We are also going to try painting like Van Gogh.

History's Mystery's was a huge success.  Thanks to Milagros Ott all the children got their pictures taken for this event.  We started the day with a photo shoot.  All of us felt like celebrities.  Back in the classroom the children gave their reports in front of the group.  This can be quite daunting, but everyone did very nicely.  I was happy to see that the quality of report writing was very advanced this year.  At the end of the morning all students gathered in the Multi-Purpose room to announce their historical figure to everyone in the school. That afternoon we had centers for the work period. The children made spider webs, spider puzzles and completed spider word searches, crossword puzzles and mazes.  This really great day was made even better with the yummy snacks we had.  Thank you to all the parents that sent in goodies.

Garden harvesting has begun.  We have pulled out squash, cukes, lettuce, pumpkins, carrots, sunflower heads and even more.  Kaweah is now getting some of the beds ready to start cold weather vegetables.  Ask your child how hard it was to pull out the sunflowers.  We were amazed!!!

In the next month or so, look for studies of India and Sri Lanka, Divali and the Winter Solstice. 
 
Keep warm everyone and don't forget to dress your child in layers as we will be going outside every day unless it pours.