Happy Friday!

 Happy Friday!

I am so excited to see the students on Monday.  This is a long post and has a lot of important information!

Drop Off

• Students will be dropped off in the Parent Pick Up area or in the bus lane.  Please have your student get out of the car quickly once you have pulled up to the drop off location as our parking lot will be more congested this year due to construction.  

Snack

• We will have a daily snack in the morning.  Please send a snack with your child each day. 
• If you need assistance providing snacks, please let me know.

Lunch

• We will be eating lunch in the classroom.  We will walk to the cafeteria to get school lunches for those purchasing lunch and then will return to the classroom to eat.
• Please make sure your student is able to open any containers they bring so they will be the only ones touching their containers to avoid unnecessary germs.

Breakfast

• If students are eating breakfast at school, they will go to the cafeteria, pick up their breakfast and return to the classroom to eat.

Masks

• Columbia Public Schools is expecting students to wear masks.  We will have lanyards at schools for students to attach to their masks.  This will help students to keep track of their masks during mask breaks.
• Students will be allowed to take off their masks when we are eating lunch and snack.
• When we are outside and students are at least 6 feet apart, they will be able to take off their masks.

Dismissal

• Students will dismiss in a staggered fashion as we have in the past.
• Announcements will be made for Apple School, Adventure Club (starting 10/26), daycare van and buses over the intercom.  
• Parent Pick Up will be called after buses have left.  Please have your Parent Pick Up card clearly displayed in the window of your car.  You will be directed to a cone and your student will meet you at the cone.
• If your student is going home a different way than normal, please email myself (kross@cpsk12.org) as well as Shawna and Angela in the office (shschulte@cpsk12.org; akorschgen@cpsk12.org).  This ensures we get the message and your student gets home safely.

Wednesdays

• Students will Zoom at 8:00 a.m. (same link they have used) for our Second Steps lesson and a fun activity together.
• The rest of the day will be an independent work day.  Students can work on ST Math, EM games, read (online or in books) and I will send home a choice board for the month.  

Not Feeling Well?

• If your student is sick, please keep them home so they can recover and also to not spread the sickness to others.
• Your student needs to be fever free and no vomiting without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school.
• Please refer to this document for specific information regarding illnesses from the CPS website.  

Book Character Pumpkins

• Each October, I do a project where students decorate a pumpkin at home to look like book character.  I introduced the idea to students today and the information sheet will be coming home on Monday.
• Students will decorate a pie size pumpkin (small pumpkin, slightly larger than a softball) using pant, glue (hot glue works best), markers or other supplies to make it look like a book character.  
• The decorating will occur at home and please no carving as that allows pumpkins to rot faster.
• Students will then fill out a sheet describing their character (attached to the form).
• Wednesdays and weekends are great times to work on this project.  
• Pumpkins need to be at school by November 5 so we can do a pumpkin gallery walk on November 6.
• If you need help getting a pumpkin, please let me know.
• Here is the information sheet.  There are examples on here, you can also Google Pumpkin Book Characters to get ideas. 

Next Week's Learning

• Reading
• We will be responding to a fiction story this week and focusing on why characters made specific decisions.
• Writing
• We will start writing our information writing about grasslands next week.
• We will be writing a paragraph each day.
• Fundations
• We will be learning about suffixes next week.
• Math
• We will continue to work on addition strategies next week.  These strategies help students to solve addition problems faster as they learn their basic facts.
• Science
• We will be focusing on how animals help plants next week and also the needs of a plant.  I am hoping to set up an experiment to see how plants react when their needs are not met.

Important Upcoming Events

• No School: November 3-4 (Election Day and Teacher Work Day)
• Pumpkin Book Characters Due (November 5)

Have a fabulous weekend and I can't wait to see the kids on Monday!

Kate