01.07.12
A Quotation by Richard Peck
"We are thus natural historians because every work of fiction becomes historical fiction the instant the ink is dry..."
Weekly Newsletter
1. Important Announcement Regarding Caedmon's Book Fair
2. Announcement Regarding Child Chat
3. A Re-Issue of Caedmon's Cold Weather Policy
4. Curriculum Notes Regular Notes
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• Inside Caedmon Archive
• Curriculum Notes Archive
1. Important Announcement Regarding Caedmon's Book Fair
The Caedmon Book Fair will have a different format than in years past. Your children will be attending the Book Fair to hear a story/presentation and make their wish lists. Parents will have the opportunity to shop during the day (see designated hours below) and return that evening (6:00-8:00pm) to hear from guest author, Richard Peck. Details for the evening were sent via the CFA newsletter last week. Please contact Gerilyn Smith at gerilynsmith@gmail.com or Carolyn Lamphier at carolyn_lamphier@yahoo.com, should you require further information.
Daytime schedule is as follows:
9:00-10:00AM 3rd-5th grades will hear from Richard Peck, award winning author, and make wish lists
10:00-11:00AM Early Program will be read a story by Ms. Vrazel
11:00-12:30PM SHOPPING HOURS for parents/caregivers/teachers
1:00-2:00PM 1st - 2nd grades will hear from guest speaker, Julissa Mora, children's book illustrator, and make wish lists
2:00-3:00PM Kindergarden will hear from Julissa Mora, illustrator & wish lists?
3:00-4:30PM SHOPPING HOURS for parents/caregivers/teachers
6:00-8:30PM Richard Peck Evening Event for parent/teachers & shopping for books after, book signing, etc.
Shopping hours for parents/sitters/caregivers:
11am-12:30pm
3-4:30pm
6-8:30pm (Book Fair will remain open 1/2 hour after Richard Peck presentation)
2. Announcement Regarding Child Chat
Lucky Dr. Leo will be in Arizona vacationing for the winter months. We wish him a wonderful time.
We are fortunate to have parenting expert Shelly McDonald join us Friday mornings while Leo is away. Shelly will be sharing valuable parenting techniques. Please see further details in the CFA email sent January 4th.
Dr. Leo will return after March break.
3. A Re-Issue of Caedmon's Cold Weather Policy
• If the temperature in NYC is greater than or equal to 25 degrees Fahrenheit, faculty are required to take students outside according to their normal courtyard schedule.
• If the temperature in NYC is between 15 degrees Fahrenheit and 25 degrees Fahrenheit, the decision to go outside rests with the classroom teachers. If there is a disagreement between or among classroom teachers, those teachers must contact Honor for direction.
• If the temperature in NYC is lower than 15 degrees Fahrenheit, faculty are prohibited from taking students outside.
All temperatures above must be determined by the NOAA's National Weather Service. Please check the local forecast by inputting our zip code (10075) in the upper left-hand corner of the website. Click "Go." Then, scroll down to observe the "Current Conditions" in the right column of the web page.
Curriculum Notes
Early Program:
• LANGUAGE: Students’ language skills are growing, including their comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence formation. Some students continue to work on sound identification, using the sandpaper letters and sound boxes, while others are beginning to sound out phonetic words and love reading in their Early Readers.
• MATH: As students’ concentration becomes longer, many are working with the short and long chains of the bead cabinet. This work prepares them for skip counting, multiplication, and the square of numbers 1-10. It also prepares them for the concepts of area and volume, and helps them to start recognizing patterns in our numeral system.
• ART: Students created paper collages.
• MOVEMENT: Students used floor spots to work on spatial relation. They jumped on and off, over the spots, and around the spots. Class concluded with a trampoline jump.
• MUSIC: Students rhythmically imitated many different movements a horse might make. They explored a new song using shaker eggs, and learned a rhythm chant juxtaposing duple and triple meter.
• SCIENCE: The class began a new unit on the seasons with the book Watching the Seasons, by Edana Eckart. Students learned about raking leaves for fall, planting flowers for spring, and squirrels collecting nuts for winter. The class also experimented with heat-sensitive paper for summer.
Kindergarten:
• ART: The class began a study of fish in art by watching the chapter “Fish” from the Discovery Channel’s “Life” series.
• COMPUTER: Students practiced reading and keyboarding skills with the program Read, Write & Type.
• LIBRARY: Student worked on making patterns in KidPix.
• MUSIC: Students began to learn about pitch notation, combining it with familiar rhythm reading. They also had a lot of fun learning a new circle dance.
• PHYSICAL EDUCATION: Students worked on hockey skills and teamwork, practicing passing, controlling the hockey ball, dribbling, and shooting.
• RELIGION: (This refers to the elective religious education that is provided upon request to Catholic families.)Students talked about how each of us is God’s special and unique gift to the world. After hearing the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the class talked about how sometimes we have to work hard to cultivate our own talents so that we have more to give back to God.
• SCIENCE:The class began a unit on the seasons and learned about how living things prepare for these changes. Students talked about how some animals migrate, or get ready for winter by hibernating. They learned about how some living things camouflage themselves from predators, gather food, or adapt in order to survive the environmental changes that come with the changing seasons.
• YOGA: After an active warm-up, the class worked with Twilight Turtle. Students came up with different yoga postures each time the turtle lit up. In response to the blue light students chose a sea or sky posture, and for the green and brown light, they did land or animal poses. Class concluded with a Twilight Turtle relaxation in which students created their own journeys with the turtle.
Lower Level:
• LANGUAGE ARTS: The class started the new year with a variety of activities. Students enjoyed reading groups and read alouds, developing their comprehension. They worked on phonics, and in grammar they studied verbs and nouns.
• MATH: First graders practiced their skills measuring, skip counting, and finding missing addends. Students solved word problems and learned how to read calendars. Second graders practiced reading calendars, skip counting, subtracting, and solving word problems. They reviewed adding and regrouping with two and three digit numbers, and played the game Close to 20.
• ART: The class began a unit on self-portraits by drawing two portraits: one using colored pencils, and one using watercolor pencils.
• COMPUTER: Students practiced reading and keyboarding skills with the program Read, Write & Type.
• LIBRARY: Students explored math, language arts, and geography game websites: http://sqworl.com/zscj6w
• MUSIC: Students wrote thank you letters to the performers they saw at Carnegie Hall last month. They also practiced singing the Martin Luther King song, “Shed A Little Light.”
• PHYSICAL EDUCATION: Students worked with basketballs, practicing bounce passes and dribbling skills. The class also paired up to play games like The Shadow, and Basketball Tag.
• RELIGION: (This refers to the elective religious education that is provided upon request to Catholic families.) First graders reviewed the goodness of all of God’s creation, noting that even though people can be weak, God is perfectly faithful. They looked at St. Francis’ Canticle of Brother Sun as an example of how to love God’s creation. Second graders learned that reconcile means bring back together. They looked at John 14:27 to learn that peace was Jesus’ gift to humanity from the Last Supper (or the First Communion). Students also learned the steps of the Sacrament of Reconciliation by doing the “reconciliation dance,” and began learning the Act of Contrition.
• SCIENCE: Students began the new year by reviewing the states of matter and talking about the concept of density for the first time. Students used Hoberman expanding spheres to see that density is different than mass.
• SPANISH: Students reviewed content related to the calendar and sang songs. They refreshed their memories of the five vowel sounds in Spanish after their long winter break.
• YOGA: After an active warm-up, the class worked with Twilight Turtle. Students came up with different yoga postures each time the turtle lit up. In response to the blue light students chose a sea or sky posture, and for the green and brown light, they did land or animal poses. Class concluded with a Twilight Turtle relaxation in which students created their own journeys with the turtle.
Middle Level: Third Grade
• LANGUAGE ARTS: Students worked on finishing up reading group projects and will present their mini-plays or persuasive speeches to their classmates next week. The class also began a new read-aloud, The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdrich, a beautifully written tale of Omakayas and her Ojibwa family.
• MATH: The class focused on subtraction with regrouping, with the traditional algorithm strategy. By practicing the steps for regrouping and comparing it with other strategies for subtraction, students are quickly understanding how efficient the traditional method can be. The class also spent time checking their subtraction by using the inverse operation of addition. Students are looking forward to starting a 2D geometry unit next week.
• SOCIAL STUDIES: The class finished its unit on the Southwest region and began looking forward to next week’s unit on the Southeast.
• ART: Students discussed and practiced drawing in one-point perspective.
• LATIN: Students began lesson five of the workbook, which introduces the Latin roots part- and studi-.
• LIBRARY: In preparation for an author visit at the end of the month, the class began reading A Long Way From Chicago, by Richard Peck.
• MUSIC: Students began using a recorder method book entitled, Recorder Express. They will use this book to improve their sight-reading and to help reinforce certain concepts in music theory.
• PHYSICAL EDUCATION: The class began hockey and basketball units. In basketball, students practiced the fundamentals of dribbling, along with the use of the jump stop. In hockey, students worked on stick handling, including the forehand and backhand. The class did a ten-minute endurance run to build stamina and improve running form.
• RELIGION: (This refers to the elective religious education that is provided upon request to Catholic families.) Students discussed the ways that forgiveness, healing and peace are related. They heard the story of Jesus healing the paralytic (Luke 5:17-26), noting the important part the faithful friends played in that miracle story.
• SCIENCE: Students began a unit on simple machines by using an online simulator. They were challenged to complete tasks using various simple machines such as a wheel and axle, lever, pulley, and a ramp.
• SPANISH: Students studied new vocabulary words related to the house. Before break they learned how to describe the outside and inside of a house, and are currently building that vocabulary and learning about household items.
Middle Level: Fourth Grade
• LANGUAGE ARTS: Students continued to enjoy their reading group books (Dear Mr. Henshaw, Because of Winn-Dixie, and Bud, Not Buddy) and class read-aloud (Bridge To Terabithia). Students examined the differences between proper sentences and sentence fragments, and learned how subjects and predicates form the vital parts of a sentence. In spelling work, students learned the frequent spelling patterns for the long e sound.
• MATH: Students worked together to create Multiple Towers: given a beginning factor, each partnership recorded all of the multiples of that factor on a strip of adding paper. The class then examined and discussed them. Students also practiced their multiplication facts with Mad Minutes.
• SOCIAL STUDIES: Students reviewed the vital skills involved in web research and note-taking, and they began their web research on the Ancestral Pueblans.
• ART: Students discussed the work of Maurizio Cattelan in preparation for their field trip to the Guggenheim Museum on Tuesday.
• LATIN: Students began work on lesson six of the workbook, which presents the roots tele- (from the Greek adverb tele, meaning “far away”) and aster- (from the Greek word aster and the Latin word astrum, which both mean “star”).
• LIBRARY: In preparation for an author visit at the end of the month, the class began reading A Long Way From Chicago, by Richard Peck.
• MUSIC: Students began a unit transferring poetry to rhythmic notation using the nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty.”
• PHYSICAL EDUCATION: The class began hockey and basketball units. In basketball, students practiced the fundamentals of dribbling, along with the use of the jump stop. In hockey, students worked on stick handling, including the forehand and backhand. The class did a ten-minute endurance run to build stamina and improve running form.
• SCIENCE: Students started a unit on electricity by learning some basic definitions. They also had their first opportunity to use Caedmon’s snap circuit kits.
• SPANISH: Students studied new vocabulary words related to the house. Before break they learned how to describe the outside and inside of a house, and are currently building that vocabulary and learning about household items.
Upper Level:
• LANGUAGE ARTS: In addition to completing a mini unit on commonly misspelled words, students prepared themselves for reading “To Build A Fire,” by participating in some pre-reading activities. First they were given a scenario of surviving in the wilderness when it’s snowy and -50 degrees. They talked about what their main concerns would be, what three or four things would they want to have with them, and how would they go about addressing their main concerns. The class wrote about this scenario. Students then talked about the importance of building a fire and were shown a fire-starting kit. To build background knowledge of the Yukon Gold Rush and the territory, the class read a short historical piece about the Stampeders and the Chilkoot Pass, and looked at some pictures and maps.
• MATH: The class continued its work with decimals, focusing on the connection between fractions and division. Students used calculators to explore this relationship and began to fill out a fraction/decimal equivalent chart.
• SOCIAL STUDIES: The class began a unit on Egypt by making a KWL chart (what we know, what we want to know, and what we learned). Students discovered that they already knew a great deal about Egypt and wanted to know a great deal as well. The class made physical, political, and resource maps of Egypt to determine where civilization might have begun, and concluded the week as archaeologists. Students examined a 2,500-year-old mummy case and tried to determine as much as they could about the person encased inside, which led to some spirited conversation.
• ART: Students discussed and practiced drawing in one-point perspective.
• LATIN: Students worked on finishing up lesson seven of the workbook, and on Tuesday will take a quiz on it. Also continuing their study of Roman writers, they learned about Cicero, the Roman statesman famous for his speeches and philosophical writings, and about Catullus, a poet greatly influenced by earlier Greek writers such as Callimachus and Sappho.
• LIBRARY: In preparation for an author visit at the end of the month, the class began reading A Long Way From Chicago, by Richard Peck.
• MUSIC: Students began a unit transferring poetry to rhythmic notation using the nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty.” The class will eventually use this poem to explore new time signatures such as five and seven beats per meter.
• PHYSICAL EDUCATION: The class began a hockey unit, learning basic stick handling techniques. Students maneuvered the puck around a series of markers and practiced making accurate passes. They also worked on stamina, sprinting short distances.
• SCIENCE: Students started a unit on air pressure, which will lead to the writing of their first lab reports.
• SPANISH: Students began a new unit learning how to describe themselves to others.
Quotation
A Quotation by Richard Peck
"We are thus natural historians because every work of fiction becomes historical fiction the instant the ink is dry..." |
