Week of September 7, 2020

Reminders:

It was WONDERFUL to be with your children this week!! Thank you for supporting them to wear masks, wash their hands, and stay physically distant from others! Please know that we value the home school partnerships. If you have a question, comment, or celebration, please let us know!

Please send your child in with 

    - a full water bottle

    - wearing shoes for PE

    - an extra layer and a hat to go outside

    - rain jacket when needed

    - knowing if they are home or school snack/lunch

    - an extra set of clothing in their backpack

    - their home school folder 

For the first weeks of school, our focus is community building. We build community by learning about each other and creating routines/expectations for how we will work and learn together. This will continue to be a major focus in our first six weeks of school together. 

At CCS, we take care of ourselves, others, and this place. We talked about what this means and have already begun earning pennies! Ask your child how students earn pennies.

As a group, we began talking about our second grade mantra. This mantra is:

We are all the same. We are all different. We are all unique.

We will use this mantra as a lens to empower children to see similarities when there only appears differences, be comfortable with differences and be brave by embarking in courageous conversations, and to see what is unique and special in others. We started this work by finding ways we are similar with each other. We played freeze noodle tag. To get someone unfrozen, we had to find a way we were similar!

We also began thinking about how each of us brings something unique to our community and that together, we are even more amazing. We read the book, The Crayon Box That Talked by Shane DeRoulf. We then decorated our own crayons to represent our pack!

The last page...

Do you know what a glyph is? Ask your child! A glyph is a simple picture or figure whose parts represent information about a given subject. It is a method of presenting data in picture form. As part of our math community building, we created Beetle Glyphs. See if you can use the Beetle Glyph Legend to learn about our community!

Another component to our work this year will be learning about and practicing mindfulness. We began by exploring the question, 'What is mindfulness?' We learned that mindfulness is paying attention to things as they are right now with kindness and curiosity. It is noticing thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they happen. It is being kind to others and yourself.We also explored how mindfulness helps our learning.

We worked hard this week!