Spirit Week!

It's Spirit Week here at the School of the Holy Childhood! Show your school spirit by participating in this week's daily activities!

Monday: Crazy hair day!

Tuesday: Oreo Day (wear black and white)!

Wednesday: Mix- Match Day!

Thursday: Pajama Day!

Friday: Jersey Day (wear your favorite team or player's shirt)!

Have a great week everyone!

Also, please watch for coverage of The School of the Holy Childhood on HCEC TV10 between 5 and 6:30 pm on February 1, 2012. The network will be reporting on a recent visit by Gena Heragty, Special Needs Director at the orphanage in Haiti, which benefits from the ceramic angels made and packaged here at the school!

Week 19

This week in Mrs. P.'s class, students continued learning about this month's country, Japan. In SPOT group students created their own version of a traditional Japanese food, preparing "candy sushi" with fruit roll-ups, rice, and fresh fruit! Mrs. P.'s class worked togetherto prepare the rice, rolling it into strips of fruit-roll-ups along with bananas and strawberries.The meal was a sweet treat, complete with maplesyrup "soy sauce."

In gym class, students continued working on their hockey unit, learning how to pass with each other and work as a team. We also completed our Circles unit in health, so students should now be able to identify what kind of talk, touch and trust is appropriate for various different people in their lives. You can review this very important lesson by asking your student about their own circles!

Mrs. P would like to thank all of you participating in this year's candy sale! We seem to be selling quite a lot of chocolate this year, and are hoping to be among the year's top sellers! Thank you for your support and keep up the great work!

Week 18

It was a short week here in Mrs. P.'s class, but what work we got done in just a few days! Mrs. P. is happy to announce that all of this term's alternate assessments have been completed, and that she is proud of each and every one of her students' hard work! Great job everyone!

Beginning with this week, Mrs. P.'s class will be responsible for reporting Friday morning announcements and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This is a very important job for our students, as it not only relays important information to the entire school, but also helps our students build confidence reading and speaking for others. This week's readers did a wonderful job, and future readers will have plenty of practice before their turns as next month's sight words will be pulled right from our nation's pledge!

As you all know, this month's country and sport of concentration are Japan and tae kwon do. This week, the school was treated to a special demonstration of another of Japan's martial arts sports called karate! Guests from Martial Arts America visted the school and taught us about the rules and values of karate. Students learned that karate is a method of self-defense which literally means "meeting of hands," though it is only implemented as a method of self-defense when karate's three preceding methods have been exhausted: walk, talk and tell. Our guests also explained that those who practice karate typically value it for its strong emphasis on strength, self-discipline and self-empowerment. Check out Mrs. P.'s class having their try at being real live karate kids!

This week was Mrs. P.'s class' final week of art. We would like to say a big thank you to Ms. Teresa Cote for all of the fun activities she included our classroom in, as well as her help in creating flags for our classrooms from the countries we are studying.

Week 17

What a great week we've had here in Mrs. P.'s class! We played new instruments, learned even more about Japan, and  practiced our sight words to near perfection! Mrs. P. has asked that all of her classroom Olympians practice their sight words at home, every day! All students have had flashcards sent home with them, and they should be using them as much as possible. Here at school we like to play "teachers versus students" with the cards. Students get to "keep" whichever words they get right and "give" the ones they get wrong to the teachers, and then count the totals to determine a winner! This is a great activity for our students to do at home, and can easily be adapted to a "parents versus kids" match. However, as the teachers in Mrs. P.'s class can attest, the students always win!

In music this week, students got to try out a new instrument: the xylophone! Our class learned how to play this instrument and how each bar makes a different sound. The students doubled up on each xylophone and each took responsibility for hitting specific notes with their mallet. Bigger bars made lower sounds, while the smaller bars made higher sounds, and each student had the chance to experiment with making various different tones with the xylophones.

In human growth and development class, students learned about the different relationships and interactions they may be faced with throughout their lives through the use of "circles." Circles are visual representations of levels of personal space that students can use to determine what amount of space is appropriate in various different social situations. Beginning with private purple circles which refer to the personal spaces of individual people themselves, and expanding to the red "stranger" circles which tell us how to interact with those people we don't know, circles help inform students how to touch, trust and talk to various people they will be involved with throughout their lives. A great way to put circles into practice at home is to identify which social circles members of your student's family and community are situated in.

Week 16

Welcome back! We hope everyone had a nice, relaxing holiday at home. We are glad to welcome everyone back to continue the great work we did here in Mrs. P.'s class in 2011.

Students jumped right back into the swing of things here, moving forward to this month's country and sport of concentration: Japan and tae kwon do! This week we were introduced to some fascinating facts about Japanese culture and its tradition of martial arts, learning about how children in Japan practice these sports as we do baseball and football here in the United States. In SPOT group, Mrs. P.'s class made small booklets about Japan's customs and culture, and even had the chance to watch a short video of one more of the country's beloved sports: sumo wrestling! Mrs. P.'s Olympians got to try this sport over this past summer when our class visited Camp Smile, only our uniforms were velcro and made us stick to bouncey walls!

Students also added a number of new sight words to their ever-growing list. Please see the left column to track how our list grows and practice the flashcards we send home to ensure Mrs. P.'s class stays on our sight-word game!

Also, now that we are through the holidays it's time to kick off the Annual Candy Sale! Please mark your calendars for January 11th for the first official Candy Rally, which will take place here in the school lunchroom. Candy bars will be delivered this Thursday, so it's not too late to place your order via email or the candy bar order form sent home with the kids. Last year Mrs. P.'s class was among top sellers for the school. Lets see if we can do even better this year!