Reminder for all Moms

Today at 2 oclock, our class will be performing our yoga dance that we have practiced with Morah Michelle for the Moms!

Dear Parents,

I'm sure you were all as proud as I was of our kids today. Its hard to believe that they will all be going into 4th Grade next year!

Thank you so much for the very generous and kind gift you gave me. It was a real privilege to teach your kids and to have such supportive parents to work with!

Have a good shabbos and thanks again,

Morah Rivki

Country Report

Thank You to all the parents who helped with preparing the reports!

We all learned some new information about life in these countries!

Trip to New York Hall of Science

Our Graduation and Recital

Dear Parents,

Our class is really looking forward to our graduation! We are all busy getting ready for the recital.

Before the recital begins all the parents will visit the classroom where student awards will be given.

In our classroom we have been reflecting about the past year and thinking to ourselves about all the ways that we have grown, matured and developed. When we take the time to reflect it is amazing for us to see how much we have changed and how much we have learned.

We each found a quiet corner in the classroom and jotted down 'then' and 'now' about many different areas! For example: How I treat my friends; How I do my homework - 'then' and 'now'. We really enjoyed remembering how we were 'then' at the beginning of the year and thinking about how we have changed 'now'.

I'm sure that as parents you have also seen growth in your child since the first day of school!

We would like to ask every parent to come up to speak with their child and share reflections of their child's growth over the year.Each child will hear from their parent how they have grown up over the year and improved and matured in so many ways! They will feel proud in front of their class! We are sure this will be very meaningful for our students.

Please confirm with me that you have received this message and that you are happy to speak to our class!

Thanks so much!

Morah Rivki

Graduation invites

Dear Parents:

In preparation for the upcoming commencement week, each student will receive 2 invitations to send out to family and family friends (i.e. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, extended family, family friends or neighbors) Being that the invitations will be mailed from the school, we request that you provide the addresses of the 2 people/ families that you and your child would like to invite to their class graduation or recital.

Please fill out the information on the form in your child's homework folder or you can email me the information (rivkiangy@gmail.com). We will be sending out the invitations tomorrow!

Thanks,

Morah Rivki

Invitation 1 will be sent to:

Name:__________________________________________________________________________________

Street address:_________________________________________________________ Apt. #_____________

City:_______________________________________________ State:____________ Zip code:____________

Invitation 2 will be sent to:

Name:__________________________________________________________________________________

Street address:_________________________________________________________ Apt. #_____________

City:_______________________________________________ State:____________ Zip code:____________

Water Bottle

Just a reminder to please remind your daughter to refill her bottle of water everyday for school.

It's important for us to drink at all times during the day, especially during the summer weeks. I am happy for everyone to drink at any time during lesson from a bottle. As a general rule we only use the class bottle to pour ourselves drinks during snack/recess/ lunch time. During lesson time there can be accidents - spilt water over our work and it can be too distracting. So individual bottles are more practical.

Thanks so much,
Morah Rivki

Our Writing - Almost Published!

We have spent several weeks on our drafts, implementing the writing techniques we have learnt from the authors we have studied!

• We learnt about leads - writers decide on a gradual beginning of their writing or a lead directly into the action.




• We learnt about structure - writers decide on the structure of their writing so that it is accessible and easily understood by the reader. We practiced 'repetitive word structure', like in "Water Dance".




• We learnt about 'voice' and how writers decide on what kind of feeling they want to give over to the reader and how their personality is going to come through in their writing.
  

Once most of us had completed our drafts we went on to revising. We discussed that most writers agree that 80% of their work going in to revising and making their writing better.

• One strategy that writers use to revise is to change the verbs that they use into more 'vivid verbs' to make their writing more powerful and interesting.
  

We are now up to editing our work. We will be reading over our pieces to check that the punctuation we have used gives power to our words!

We hope to publish soon so that we can share some of our published pieces by the recital!

End of Year Trip - New York Hall of Science

The trip will take place on June 14th - 9:30 - 1:30. We will be travelling by school bus.

In addition to visiting the hands-on, exciting exhibits, we will also be having time in the science playground!

Our Next Math Unit - 10

In this unit we are reviewing measures of length , weight and capacity. This unit we will be doing a lot of hands-on activities, because everything that involves measures begins with the use of measuring tools.

We will be extending previous work with the median and mode of a set of data and introducing the 'grown-up' method for calculating the mean. We will also get experience with plotting points on a coordinate grid.

The Walkathon!

Our class walked for 45 mins to raise money for our 'Yeladim Play Yard'.

Health Event

Did you know that some of the most dangerous chemicals are found right in your home? From laundry detergents to other cleaners, from personal care products such as shampoos, toothpastes and makeup even to first aid products such as pain relief medications and topical ointments, many of them contain chemicals that can affect the development of growing children and the pollution level of your home.

Join us as we conclude Health and Safety Month at Mazel Dayschool with a presentation showing you how you can replace these dangerous chemicals with safer, more effective products.

THIS Tuesday evening at 7 PM at Mazel Dayschool

Social Studies Project - Country Report

We have started off on our Social Studies Report. This year we have each chosen a country in Europe. Our class is really excited about the report and the kids are looking forward to researching and working independently to find interesting information and display it creatively! The due date is Wednesday June 15th and Wednesday and Friday's homework have been designated for time to complete it. Apart from internet research, which needs adult supervision, I hope that your child will be able to do the project independently!

Health Professional

Today Miriam Golda's Mom came in to speak to us about being a nurse! We talked about keeping healthy and what is involved in the job of a nurse. Mrs Kimmelfeld showed us how blood pressure is taken and we each had a turn to practice using a stethoscope and hear each others heartbeats. We learned about immunizations and we gave a doll an injection using a real needle!

It was a lot of fun to actually use these tools! Thank you Mrs Kimmelfeld for Sharing with us!

Thank You!

Just want to say thank you for the beautiful gift that the class bought us. Mendel will definitely enjoy playing with the cute toys! Thanks so much!

Getting Ready for Lag B'Omer...

We have been getting ready for Lag B'Omer - also known as 'Jewish Unity Day' by making posters and signs for the 'Great Parade'! We each chose a mitzvah and "advertized" it on a poster. We will be using them for our school's march in the Great Parade.

Our school will also be having its own mini parade in Brighton Beach on friday!

Middah of the Week - Keeping neat and clean

This week's Middah is all about being tidy and neat!
We discussed:
-Eating with manners and staying clean
-Being organized
-Tidying up after ourselves and putting things back.

If you see your child making an effort in one of these areas - please fill out a 'Middos Message Note' so we can share it with the class! We have saved all our notes from the whole year and it will be special to see all the Middos that we practiced at the end of the year!

May is Health and Fitness Month!

We will be discussing how to have a healthy lifestyle...

-Healthy eating - We will be learning about the types of food and nutrition that are important to include in our diet. The Parents are making for us a special vegetable and juice bar which we will be visiting tomorrow! We will also be making a salad for lunch together next week!

-Being active-Exercising - We will be choosing a nice day to take a jog on the boardwalk!

-Hygiene - how to stop the spreading of germs, keeping clean and brushing our teeth.

-Healthy living -Going to sleep on time.

We will be asking any parents who work in the field of health or fitness to come in and talk to us about being healthy and fit. If you are able to come in and talk to us about this - please let me know!

Social Studies - American Presidents, USA flag and Growth in America...

This year we chose to learn about President Abraham Lincoln. We learned how he saved the union and stood up for his beliefs of equality for all Americans. We learned about his love of books and words. We saw a picture of the items that he had in his pocket on the day he was assassinated and talked about what those items say about him. Then we each brought in a bag of our own 5 personal items and we let the class guess who they belong to and what they "say" about us!

We learned about how the flag changed over time and what it means to our nation. Each part of the flag symbolizes our nation and each star stands for one of our states. We learned the 'Pledge of Allegiance' that was written for a 'raising the flag' ceremony. The Pledge helps Americans remember the ideals of freedom and justice that make our country proud! We each made a flag for our family - with one star for each person. Each student chose the colors that they feel are important for their family and included any other symbols that are important to them.

We learned about the growth that took place in San Francisco - its population grew in the year 1849 from 600 to 25,000! This was because of the gold that was discovered there. We learned about how the city grew, what changed, developed and how they had to constantly rebuild. Now the population is more than 750,000! We learned about the Senate and House of Representatives that decide the laws of our country. The senate has 2 representatives from each state and the House of Representatives has seats allocated according to population. It was very important then to know the exact population of each state! we learned about the census, how workers came to each house originally and now we can fill out forms ourselves. We learned about the importance of the census - how city planners use the information to plan: schools, malls and for emergencies. We learned about how America has grown every time the census has been taken. We looked at a population map and made our own, each state colored in according to its population. This week we will be asking our parents where our ancestors came from and showing our class on the map where they moved to. A lot of people from other countries came to the United States to live - that is why our country grew so much!

Middah of the Week

This week we discussed the Middah of "Dan L'chaf Zchus" - Judging others favorably. That means that when one of our friends does something we don't like or we feel wronged, we try to think the most positively about them. For example, we can think: " She did it by mistake", "she didn't notice", "she had a good reason for behaving like that which I didn't know..." etc.

We don't jump to conclusions and we try not to be judgmental of our friends!

If there is an opportunity to practice or discuss this hard middah with your child, it will be a great reinforcement! Please fill out a middah note!

Mazal Tov!

We would like to wish a really big MAZEL TOV to Morah Ariella on her engagement to Rabbi Mendy Weg.

Ariella invites all parents to her engagement party tonight at the JCM (Jewish Children's Museum - downstairs hall) at 8.30pm.

Our Purim Party on Friday...

Basket of Compliments

This year we prepared a special kind of Mishloach Monos for our friends. We made a basket of COMPLIMENTS!

check out the compliments that your child received from her friends!

Happy Purim!

Science Chapter 6 - Weather

The big question of this chapter is "How Does Weather Follow Patterns?"

In this chapter we will discover:

-Patterns of weather

-How people measure and predict weather, and

-Ways people stay safe during a storm

Our key words are :

• Weather


• atmosphere


• hurricane


• tornado


• Blizzard

On Thursday, we did an exploration: "How can we measure wind speed?" We made a wind speed meter and went outside to read the wind speed. We will be recording the wind speed over the next few days to see if there are any patterns...

Pictures from our trip to the JCM...

We had a busy program at the JCM last monday. We made Hamantashen and masks. We had a game show and toured the 3rd and 4th floor exhibits with a twist on purim...

Our Writing -Update...

Our Touchstone Texts:

We used "What You Know First" by Patricia MacLachlan to learn about 'internal conflict'.

We used 'Freedom Summer' by Deborah Wiles to learn about "snapshots" and internal conflict.We Used 'Baby' by Patricia MacLachlan to learn about "Luscious leads".

We used "Hello, Harvest Moon" by Ralph Fletcher to learn about 'memorable language'.

We used 'Water Dance' by Thomas Locker to learn about text structure.

We used 'My Chinatown' to learn about 'word choices.

We have been immersing ourselves in the writing of excellent authors. We have used our "reading like a writer" eyes to notice memorable writing, good word choices and interesting text structures: circular, alphabet, repetitive words and phrases. We have seen how writers pull their readers into the writing with strong leads...

Last week, we began generating ideas for a piece of our own. We saw how writers often create pieces in which characters have 'internal conflict'. Internal conflict is when a character is being pulled in two directions at once and has to decided between two things. It is a dilemma/problem.

We then brainstormed ourselves of times when we had 'internal conflict'...

We saw how some writers create 'snapshots' - by zooming into a moment of time and focusing on all the details of that moment to make the writing really interesting and 'juicy' to read. We then chose a moment - wrote it regularly and then we made a 'snapshot' of the moment and zoomed in to describe and frame all the details!

Our class has really enjoyed noticing and practicing these strategies! We have become experts at "reading like writers"!