Jeh Kulu African Drummers and Dancers

This week we had some visitors to SCS from the group Jeh Kulu. They are an African Dance and Drumming group from Burlington.  On Friday, we were treated to a great performance by the drummers.  It was hard to keep from dancing to the beat!  All next week Jeh Kulu will be in the children's P.E. classes teaching them African Dancing and then next Friday we will have a final performance by Jeh Kulu.  It should be a fun week filled with lots of music and dance!  Here is a link if you want to see the type of work Jeh Kulu does with schools...  Jeh Kulu Artists in Residence

We also had Hands on Nature this week.  This month's theme was air.  Through an entertaining play and engaging experiments, we learned about the importance of air to everything on our planet and discovered the properties of air.  Ask your child about the experiments we did! What did he or she learn about air? Thanks to our great Hands on Nature volunteers!

In writing, we continue to work on our persuasive speeches about concerns we have in our school and about noteworthy people in our school.  This week's focus was on thinking about your audience and finding ways to bring your listeners along and directly address their thoughts on your topic.   For example, a child may add one of the following sentence starters to get the audience more involved in the speech:

• "Maybe you are wondering..."
• "Let me tell you..."
• "Have you ever..."
• "What about..."

Be sure to ask your child about his or her persuasive speech drafts this week. Who did he or she write about? Who is a noteworthy person at SCS to your child?

In math, we began a new unit on measurement.  This week most of our work involved telling time to the minute on an analog clock.  Some students found this to be a bit tricky...so if you happen to have an analog clock at home (not a digital clock), you could practice telling time with your child.  We also learned about elapsed time and solved word problems that involved figuring out how long something took to be completed.

Please note that Report Cards will be coming home on Friday, January 29th.  Our next parent conference will be happening in March.  We will let you know when our schedules are ready for you to sign up.  Have a wonderful weekend!