Specials are Spot On

This month, first graders sharpened their music literacy skills. They learned to read, write, and sing three notes: mi, sol, and (in some classes) la, and continued practicing the rhythms they know. They learned how to read note heads on a music staff as well. Some students also learned about percussion instruments and became instrument detectives. They were provided with a checklist and a variety of small instruments, in order to determine whether each instrument was played by hitting, shaking, or scraping. (Some classes will do this in the next couple of weeks.) The pictures below are of first graders busily exploring the instruments as they filled out their checklists! Our new song and game this month was “Here Comes a Bluebird”, which highlights the spring weather and our newest solfa note, la. Please feel free to email with any comments or questions.

Mrs. Maldonado

With Mrs. Flannery, students have spent the month working on comparing two book characters using an online Venn Diagram. Students have done a great job practicing their key boarding skills while creating their diagrams. We spent one lesson getting used to the online tool by Read Write Think and compared 'apples' and oranges'. During the second lesson we read the fable The Country Mouse and City Mouse, and students worked independently to create a Venn Diagram comparing the two main characters.

With Mrs. Hill, students participated in the following read alouds:

Livingstone Mouse by Pamela Duncan Edwards

This is a Serious Book by Jodie Parachini

Somebody and the Three Blairs by Marilyn Tolhurst

The Cow Who Wouldn’t Come Down by Paul Brett Johnson

Poodlena by E. B. McHenry

Harriet the Invinsible by Ursula Vernon

Roscoe Riley Rules #1, Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs by Katherine Applegate

If you have any questions in regards to your child’s library experience. Please don’t hesitate to contact us or locate more information on the library webpage.

Mrs. Flannery and Mrs. Hill

Hi everyone!

Things are going great in PE class, the children are working very hard, showing much improvement, and having a lot of fun! We spent March playing cooperative games and using the scooters, and, as always, working on our fitness, flexibility, balance, coordination, strength, and power.

In mid April we will set up for our longest unit of the school year, gymnastics, a favorite of all the children! We are fortunate to have actual gymnastic equipment and we spend about 5-6 weeks on this unit.

Just around the corner, we will be sending home volunteer forms for our end of the year finale, Fun Days! Fun Day for Gr. 1 will be June 6th, with the makeup date June 9th, if necessary. Fun Day takes place for the whole day, with many fun activities and stations to visit and enjoy. We have always been very, very fortunate to have a great parent and family turnout to help with making Fun Days the great day and success it has been for decades now. Keep your eyes open for these forms, coming home early May, we hope you are able to lend a helping hand, it is a lot of fun and the children love to see their parents and people they know spending the day having fun with them!

We hope you all enjoyed your April vacation, hopefully everybody was able to spend some time outside having fun and getting in a workout in as well!

Take care,

Coach Boscarino and Coach Ruel

In Miss Pinto’s art room, for the month of April, we have spent some time wrapping up our clay unit and we are now finally glazing our monster sculptures! We are so excited!!

Expect to see our amazing monster clay sculptures and their habitats coming home in the next few weeks after they get fired a SECOND time to make them become shiny and colorful!

Between glazing and firing our work to completion, we have been able to explore PROBLEM SOLVING with a fun collage project where the students needed to find a way to get to a final work of art with exploration of materials and testing out ideas. We found that some of our “first tries” with cutting and gluing pieces for our work didn’t work out, and we had to figure out what to do next. We practiced asking others for guidance, demonstrations, or ideas if we got stuck, and were amazing independent learners! In the end, we have created these beautiful spring inspired collages with a variety of papers, textures, and colors that will come home by next week!

Miss Pinto and Miss Fausette

Email: rflannery@easthamptonct.org
Website: www.easthamptonps.org
Location: Memorial School, Smith Street, East Hampton, CT, United States
Phone: 8603654020
Facebook: facebook.com/MemorialElementarySchool
Twitter: @EHPublicSchools