Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Thank you to everyone who attended our Esprit Team Publishing Party on Wednesday!  The children were very excited to share their hard work in writing with you!  When we get back from vacation, we are going to start our next writing genre: persuasive or opinion writing!

We also a "Sip and Snack and Paint" celebration on Monday!  The children had a little snack and painted a holiday gift for a special person in his or her life. The paintings turned out very cute!  Thanks to those who provided the snacks/drinks for our classes!

Just a reminder that we do not have school from December 23rd- January 2nd. School resumes on Wednesday, January 3rd.  We hope that you have a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy 2018!

Getting Ready to Publish!

Esprit Third Graders have spent the week finishing their nonfiction books, adding the final text features, cover, and illustrations!  They are very excited to share these books with you at our Publishing Party on Wednesday, December 20th at 2:30pm.  Please let your child's teacher know if you can attend the Publishing Party. If you cannot, we will be sure to invite other staff members from our school to attend and listen to your child's book.  See you Wednesday!

Last week, the students of SCS filled up the big C in SCS with cat coins!  That means there has been a lot of safe, responsible, and respectful behavior happening here at school!  To celebrate, we had a Mix-it-Up afternoon!  Both Miss Deb's class and Miss Niles' class met with their middle school buddies and created holiday cards for some senior citizens in our area. Everyone had a wonderful time creating their cards and mixing it up!

In math we focused on subtraction strategies this week, particularly the standard algorithm for subtraction. We used base ten pieces and sketches as a visual to see what happens when a mathematician has to trade or regroup with subtraction.  We continued to practice during much of the week as this tends to be a tricky strategy to master quickly.  Ask your child if he or she can show demonstrate the subtraction standard algorithm for you!

Miss Deb's class spent some more time this week doing "An Hour of Code" with Chromebooks.  They also played a fun game on Kahoot.com that Miss Deb created to practice their multiplication facts.  Both Miss Niles' and Miss Deb's classes have been working toward fluency with multiplication facts during the month of December.

During Reader's Workshop, Miss Niles' class has started doing a book study of Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  They are reading the story aloud as a class, discussing characters, and focusing on comprehension strategies.  Ask your child about the wild and wacky characters they have met in this book so far!  Miss Deb's class is reading books about people who have made a difference in the world.  These books are giving students a glimpse into life in other areas of the world and modeling for students how one person, adult or child, can make a big difference in the quality of others' lives.  Ask your child how some of the people in these stories have helped others have a better life!

Many third graders also chose to participate in the Scripps Spelling Bee written test to try and qualify to participate in the SCS Spelling Bee.  We will know the results soon!  Way to go spellers!

Have a great weekend!

Hour of Code

This week we participated in the Hour of Code, a week in December,  during which children are encouraged to try coding and beginning programming.  On Tuesday, we the children had the opportunity to try out different coding games.  They can access these coding games at home at Hour of Code Activities.  Be sure to ask your child about the coding games he or she tried!

In math, we continued working with triple-digit numbers and worked on rounding those numbers to the nearest ten and hundred.  We also learned the standard algorithm for adding numbers in math.  After using a variety of strategies to solve multi-digit addition problems, the children were taught how to add numbers in the way you were probably taught in elementary school.  We used base ten pieces (hundreds, tens, and ones) and quick sketches to help model the standard algorithm as well.  Can your child demonstrate this new strategy for you?

In Reader's Workshop, we are continuing with our nonfiction study.  Miss Deb's class is reading historical books and Miss Niles' class is reading biographies.  This week Jeff Badillo, our technology integrationist, visited Miss Niles' class to teach them how to use Puppet Edu.  This is an app on the ipad that allows students to make slide shows with voice recording.  The children then read and created slideshows about the subjects of their biographies.  Ask your child about his or her slideshow!

Our nonfiction books in Writer's Workshop are coming along quite nicely!  We hope to have some kind of author's share before the Holiday Break.  Many children are in the rewriting and publishing phases of the writing process.

We were very excited that one of our Esprit 3rd Graders was chosen as Principal of the Day for this month!  He spent the day with Ms. Celmer and had the opportunity to read to some of the students in the school and drink hot chocolate!!!

Lastly,  we hope to see many of you at the PTO Holiday Craft Fair this Saturday.  Team Esprit will have a table so be sure to stop by and see all of their creations.  Have a great weekend!

Spelling Bee

Mrs. Davenport visited our kiva this week to invite third graders to participate in this year's Spelling Bee.  Those students who are interested in participating have been given a list of words they may study to prepare for the written part of the Spelling Bee, which will take place before the Holiday Break.  Five third graders will be selected to participate in the SCS Spelling Bee based on how well they perform on the written test.  Ask your child if they are participating in the Spelling Bee.
Esprit spent our week getting ready for the SCS Holiday Craft Fair.  We typed our recipes, created covers, and assembled our cookbooks.  We also painted kindness rocks to sell on December 9th.  Thank you for sending in all the great recipes for us to include in our cookbook!
Esprit students have earned enough cat coins for positive behavior, both in school and at home, to have a celebration.  It has been wonderful to see all of the "above and beyond" things students have been doing at home and in their commnity.  Students chose to bring a stuffy to school on Monday as their celebration.
A huge thank you to those of you who have signed up to work the Esprit Holiday Craft Fair table!
Have a great weekend!
:)Deb and Jenn

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week flew by on Team Esprit! It's hard to believe it's already the Thanksgiving break.  Please remember that we do not have school next week. School will resume on November 27th.

We started the week with community building activity:  helping to make Stone Soup that would be served for lunch to the whole school on Wednesday!  We visited the cafeteria and spent time peeling and chopping vegetables for this school-wide soup.  We chopped onions, carrots, butternut squash, kale, garlic, sweet potatoes, and potatoes.  Be sure to ask your child how he or she helped in the soup-making process!

During Writer's Workshop, we continued to work on our nonfiction expert books. The children have been drafting and are beginning to move into the editing and revising steps of the writing process.  We also used mentor nonfiction texts to help us write interesting introductions and conclusions.  At what stage of the writing process is your child?

At Reader's Workshop, we are still focusing on nonfiction, but have moved toward narrative  nonfiction.  These are books with true facts and information told in the form of a story. We have been introduced to and have been reading many biographies.  As the children have been reading the biographies, they have been stopping and jotting down notes about the events of the person's life and why the person is important.  Ask your child about some of the biographies he or she has read this week!

In math, we spent the week focusing on rounding numbers, estimation, and multi-digit addition.  The children were introduced to the concept of rounding numbers to the nearest ten and nearest hundred.  We also played three games to practice these skills: Round Ball Tens, Round and Add Tens, and Round Ball Hundreds.  We solved story problems and worked on strategies for solving triple-digit addition problems.  We learned an efficient strategy called "give and take" to use when adding.  Can your child explain that to you?  After our break, we will turn our attention to three-digit subtraction problems and strategies!

Thank you to those of you who sent in recipes for our Esprit Cookbook for the craft fair and for the rocks to make Kindness Rocks.  We will be working on those two projects the week we get back from our Thanksgiving Break.  If you are interested in volunteering to run our Esprit table at the craft fair, please let Deb or Jenn know and we can send you the link for the sign up.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Enjoy your time with family and friends!

Message from The Flying Pig

Katherine Paterson on Saturday, Nov. 18

The Flying Pig is delighted to welcome  the legendary author Katherine Paterson to Shelburne Town Hall on Saturday, Nov. 18 at 1 pm. (Please note this is a time and venue change.)

Katherine Paterson's latest book, My Brigadista Year, follows a 13-year-old Cuban girl as she volunteers for Fidel Castro's national literacy campaign and travels into the impoverished countryside to teach rural families how to read.

Paterson is the award-winning author of many beloved books for young people, including Bridge to Terabithia and Lyddie. 

There will be a brief reading and Q & A with Paterson, followed by a signing. The Flying Pig will have the full slate of her books on hand for autographing.

Thinkmarks, Predators, Walking Tour...and more!

We have had another great week on Team Esprit!  Please check your child's Friday Folder this week.  There are several notes regarding the PTO Holiday Craft Fair,  Scholastic Book Orders, Nearby Nature, and information about the new positive behavior acknowledgement system that has begun at SCS.  We attended an assembly this morning to learn all about Cat Coins!  Please read the note we sent home and ask your child about these Cat Coins.

In math, we are finishing Unit 2: Multiplication and Graphing.  This week we worked on taking surveys and then graphing the data from the survey.  We surveyed our classrooms about favorite ice cream flavors and favorite genres of books.  Then the children took that data and created picture graphs and bar graphs.  We learned about the importance of labels, titles, and keys on a graph.  We learned how read data off of a line plot graph as well.

In Reader's Workshop, we are continuing along with our nonfiction unit.  This week we learned that nonfiction readers often "Stop and Jot" thoughts while they are reading.  As the children read their nonfiction books, they recorded their thoughts on a "Thinkmark".  A thinkmark is a place to record new learning, ask questions, jot down new vocabulary, or summarize the main idea of a section of a text.  Ask your child what nonfiction book he or she read this week.  We will continue reading nonfiction next week as we move into a biography study.

In writing, the children are working on their nonfiction books.  This week they learned how to use different types of graphic organizers (webs, flow charts, venn diagrams) to help brainstorm about their chapters.  Once the children completed their planning pages, they started drafting their books and adding nonfiction text features.  Have you asked your child the topic of his or her expert book?

This week both classes had Nearby Nature. This month's theme was predators and prey.  Through a puppet show and activities, we learned that predators and prey need to eat, but they face different challenges in getting their food. Predators must find their prey, chase, and catch it. Prey animals must look for food carefully... always on the lookout for predators. We enjoyed playing a predator/prey tag game.  The prey had a hard time staying away from those predators!  We also had fun acting out scenarios with prey and predators. 

We finished our Shelburne Story Social Studies unit this week with a walking tour of Shelburne Village.  On our walking tour the children learned about many of the buildings in Shelburne Village, when they were built, and for what they were used.  Did you know that the building that the Flying Pig is in is the oldest building in Shelburne?  It was built in 1796 by Captain Benjamin Harrington and was originally the Shelburne Inn!

Lastly, SCS will be making Stone Soup on Wednesday in the cafeteria.  This is organized by the SCS Food Smart Program Committee...formerly FEED.  They are asking kids to bring in garden or store bought vegetables for the soup on Monday.  The Esprit Team will be going to the cafeteria on

Monday to help prep the vegetables.  We are looking for two volunteers for each class to help us with this!  Miss Deb's class will be going from 10:00-10:30am on Monday and Miss Niles' class will be going from 9:30-10:00am on Monday. Please email Miss Deb or Miss Niles if you are available to volunteer.

Shelburne History Timelines

Team Esprit has been working hard creating Shelburne History Timelines on Padlet.  Students have all chosen events in Shelburne's history that they think were important and have created their timelines around those events.  They have also created and included pictures of each event.  Students will soon be sharing their timelines virtually with their families.

This Wednesday, November 8th,  the Esprit Team has planned our walking historical field trip into Shelburne.  We are very excited to learn about the historical significance of many of the buildings right here in the Village of Shelburne.  Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately for the walk on Wednesday.

We have been diving deeper into nonfiction this week during our Reader's and Writer's Workshops.  We have been practicing synthesizing information from two different texts about the same topic in Reader's Workshop and have begun writing chapters for our "Expert" informational texts in Writer's Workshop.  Ask you child what expert topic they are writing about.

In Math, we continue to explore a variety of strategies to solve multiplication problems.  Through problem strings, we have been looking for patterns and practicing using doubles and doubles of doubles to more efficiently solve the problems we are presented with.

The unexpected school closing on Monday moved our scheduled Mix-It Up day to Wednesday afternoon.  Several times a year elementary classes are paired with middle school classes to spend some time doing activities together and getting to know each other.  This year, Miss Deb's class is paired with Mr. Brunvand's class.  Miss Deb's class visited Mr. Brunvand's class and played board games during their Mix-It Up time.  Miss Niles' class is paired with Mrs. Bennett's class.  Mrs. Bennett's class visited the Esprit space and worked together with Miss Niles' class to create kindness rocks.

A huge thank you to all the Esprit parents who donated food for our "Harvest Celebrations" on Tuesday.  Both classrooms enjoyed some wonderful choices of healthy treats for our celebrations.
Have a terrific weekend and don't forget to set your clocks back Sunday!

Another busy week!

The Esprit Team has spent the past two weeks learning about Google Classrooms with Jeff Badillo, our Technology Coach.  Both Miss Deb's and Miss Niles' classes have their own google classrooms where in classroom work projects can be completed online.  This week we used it to respond to a prompt about The Wild Robot.  We are also creating timelines of Shelburne history using Padlet through Google Classrooms. In Padlet the children are creating slides with dates and facts about Shelburne history.  They will also be creating pictures to illustrate historic events.  We will take pictures of these and load them onto Padlet to complete their timelines. We will continue to house online projects and other online classroom assignments on Google Classrooms for the remainder of the school year.

Our UVM Sophomore interns taught a lesson about an aspect of Chinese Culture this week.  They taught the children about the twelve Chinese Zodiac.  They discussed the characters and personalities of Chinese Zodiac and how to find your own Chinese Zodiac.

In Math, we spent the week exploring "Wally the Window Washer" multiplication array problems.  Students represented their thinking through multiplication and repeated addition.  We also learned a game called "Frog Jump Multiplication" which gave students opportunities to increase their understanding of multiplication and become more fluent with multiplication facts.

In Reader's and Writer's Workshops, we continue to learn about nonfiction text features and how they support our understanding of main idea and details.  We are practicing comprehension strategies in reading, and are using that learning to guide us in writing our own nonfiction books.

Have a great weekend,
Deb and Jenn

Shelburne Story

We had another great week on Team Esprit!  Please note that we do not have school tomorrow, Friday, October 20th.

During our theme time, we continued with our study of Shelburne's history and the Abenaki Native Americans. This week we focused on what it would be like to be settlers moving to a new land, like Shelburne.  The children worked in partnerships and had to first create a list of twelve items that they could bring on their walking journey to settle in a new land.  Then they had to create a diary entry, comic strip, or skit to show how they would deal with a specific challenge along the way (ex. running out of food or one of the family members getting sick).  Lastly, they created a diagram of their newly settled home in Shelburne and labeled all the items they might have inside and outside of their homes.  Ask your child about his or her settler "family's" home and what it looks like!

In math, we are continuing our work with multiplication.  The children learned a new game called Loops and Groups in which they roll a die twice in order to create a certain number of loops and certain number of shapes in the loops.  They then create a multiplication equation to match their picture.  Each player takes five turns and adds up the products, or answers, to the multiplication problems.  The child with the highest sum is the winner.  This was a fun game and some students challenged themselves by using higher numbers on the dice!  We also practiced skip-counting by threes, sixes, and nines explored how skip-counting is related to multiplication.

During Reader's Workshop, we started our nonfiction text study.  We began the unit by talking about how reading fiction is different than reading nonfiction.  Before reading nonfiction, we have to rev our minds!  This means we should preview the text and text features and think about what the book or sections will mostly be about.  We continued with our nonfiction study in writer's workshop as well.  Nonfiction authors are experts about topics.  These are topics they either know a lot about, care about, and can teacher others. Each child brainstormed his or her own expert list.  We will use these topics to write nonfiction books during this unit!

Finally, we have been enjoying reading The Wild Robot the past few weeks and have had the chance to connect with another third grade class in Illinois.  We have used a online, collaborative site called Padlet to share about our predictions and ideas about the story.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her favorite part of The Wild Robot so far!

Have a great long weekend!

Nearby Nature

This week our Nearby Nature parents taught us about trees.  We made observations of trees, created leaf rubbings and interviewed trees.  Many thanks to our Nearby Nature parents for a wonderful, engaging lesson about trees. Ask your child what is special about the tree "General Sherman".

We continued to learn about how we can search for clues in our reading to figure out what hard words mean.  We practiced finding context clues and figurative language in Stone Fox.  We also talked about questions we may have as we read and practiced revisiting earlier parts of the story and pushing ourselves to think and rethink about characters to imagine something about their motivations.

In Writer's Workshop, we continued to practice writing paragraphs this week.  Next week, we will begin an informational writing unit.  We will review non-fiction text features and begin writing our own information texts about a topic we are experts about.

We finished Unit 1 in Math this week and are moving into our second unit which will be an introduction to mulitiplication.  Students will be solving problems that are embedded in different contexts and be invited to think of multiplication in different ways.  They will make use of a variety of models for multiplication, including equal groups, arrays, the number line,and ratio tables.

We continued our learning about Shelburne history this week.  We watch a video about the Eastern Woodlands and created a Venn Diagram comparing hunting from long ago with hunting today.

Finally, thank you to all of our parents for meeting with us for conferences this week.  We appreciated the opportunity to share all of the terrific learning your children have already done in this first six weeks of school.  We look forward to collaborating with all of you this year to make third grade a happy, productive and successful year for your children.

Have a terrific weekend,

Deb and Jenn

Author Visit

This week SCS has been lucky to host Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, a Vermont children's book author. All of the third, fourth, and fifth grade teams had the opportunity to hear Natalie speak and explain how she gets the ideas for her stories.  She told us that most of her stories are based on real-life family stories...stories about her great-great grandparents and aunts and uncles.  She encouraged the children to ask about family stories from the past to get inspiration to write their own books.  We also had the chance to host Natalie on the Esprit Team. She visited us twice to do writing activities and work on adding detail and description to our writing.  She has even inspired some children to start writing their own books during Brain Break.

Speaking of books...we were so excited on Tuesday to visit our new SCS Exploration Center (also known as our library).  After a whole summer of renovation, the library is complete and it is beautiful!  The children were thrilled to check out new books and explore the cozy places to sit in the library.  Your child will be allowed to take out three books at a time from the library.  In third grade we do not have an official library day; therefore, your child can return his or her books any day during Brain Break.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her favorite part of the library!  My guess it was the Story Portal!!

In math, we have continued to work on addition and subtraction strategies when working with double-digit numbers.  The children have been encouraged to solve problems using different strategies (number line, diagram, words, equations, decomposing numbers) which reminds us that there are multiple pathways to solve problems.  They have been working on showing their thinking clearly and working on how to talk about their thinking so it makes sense to their peers.  We also learned a new game called Target 100 which required both the addition and subtraction of double-digit numbers.  Ask your child how to play!

During Reader's Workshop, we took a pause from the book Stone Fox and have been working on different reading strategies, such as retelling, predicting, persevering when the text gets difficult (grit), and using a variety of decoding strategies to figure out tricky words in the text.  The children have also been building their reading stamina and examining their school reading logs to look for patterns in their reading habits.

We also started our first Social Studies theme this week.  To start the year, we will be learning about the history of Shelburne and about the Abenaki Native Americans who lived in this area.  We began our study by sharing all we know about Shelburne and then we brainstormed a list of wonders or questions we have about Shelburne and its past.  We also began to learn more about the Abenaki Native Americans by reading several articles about their food, clothing, shelter, and artifacts.

Have a great weekend! We look forward to meeting with many of you next week to share your child's accomplishments thus far in the year!

Walking Wednesdays

Please join us for Walking Wednesdays!

October 2017

October has arrived, and you know what that means...Walking Wednesdays!  This year we thought we’d continue an opportunity for more students to participate in this wellness activity.  

Beginning October 4th, all K-8 SCS students and families are invited to meet at the “parade” green on the corner of Church Street and Route 7 (Farmer’s Market location).  We will meet up with buses D, G and H at about  7:45-7:50.  Any students who want to get off the bus and walk to school are encouraged to do so.  There will be cones set up on the right (north) side of Church St. with the Shelburne Police there to assist.  Teachers, staff, and community members will supervise students as they cross Route 7, walk down the sidewalk by the library and coffee shop, and head west on Harbor Road.

• October 11th, Bus D,    Driver~Diane
• October 18th, Bus G,    Driver~Damian
• October 25th, Bus H,    Driver~Lucy

Although, we would love to have everyone participate, this is an optional activity.  Any students remaining on the bus will continue on to the school.

Start Up of Word Study!

This was Esprit's first week of Word Study!  We spent our first week learning about what it looks like and sounds like during word study and practicing word study routines, procedures and responsibilities.

During Reader's Workshop,Team Esprit spent this week practicing a variety of comprehension strategies through our class read aloud, Stone Fox.  We discussed how strong readers envision a story in their heads and make predictions based on what has already happened, what they know about how stories tend to go and empathizing with characters.

In Math, we continued to play games to work on our fluency with subtraction facts.  We also began working with measurement and went on a scavenger hunt for lengths.  We used strategies to fluently add sums, and practiced constructing viable arguments to critique  the reasoning of others.

Using our chromebooks, Mr. Badillo introduced us to Google Docs this week.  We practiced writing sentences on google docs, learned how to give our docs a title,  explored different fonts and font sizes and other options on google docs.  We will continue to use Typing Club to practice our keyboarding skills at school.  If your child would like to practice at home, they can access Typing Club from their home computer.at

In Writer's Workshop we began talking about why writers use paragraphs.  We spent some time using a template to create our own paragraphs in our writing.  We practiced including topic sentences, details and closing sentences when writing paragraphs.

The Esprit Team will be having our pictures taken on Wednesday, October 11th.  Please put that date on your calendar so you can make sure your child is ready for the picture.

Have a terrific weekend, everyone!

Walking Wednesdays!

Please join us for Walking Wednesdays!

October 2017

October has arrived, and you know what that means...Walking Wednesdays!  This year we thought we’d continue an opportunity for more students to participate in this wellness activity.  

Beginning October 4th, all K-8 SCS students and families are invited to meet at the “parade” green on the corner of Church Street and Route 7 (Farmer’s Market location).  We will meet up with buses E, D, G and H at about  7:45-7:50.  Any students who want to get off the bus and walk to school are encouraged to do so.  There will be cones set up on the right (north) side of Church St. with the Shelburne Police there to assist.  Teachers, staff, and community members will supervise students as they cross Route 7, walk down the sidewalk by the library and coffee shop, and head west on Harbor Road.

• October 4th, Bus E,      Driver~PJ
• October 11th, Bus D,    Driver~Diane
• October 18th, Bus G,    Driver~Damian
• October 25th, Bus H,    Driver~Lucy

Although, we would love to have everyone participate, this is an optional activity.  Any students remaining on the bus will continue on to the school.

Fire Safety Day

We have had another wonderful week with our Esprit third graders!  One highlight from the week was Fire Safety Day at SCS.  We learned about fire hazards in our homes and how we can help prevent fires.  We also practiced climbing out a window in the event of a fire.  The children also learned about the importance of creating an escape plan with their families and deciding on a meeting spot outside of the home in case of a fire.

This week in math we began the third grade Bridges Math Program.  To start, we focused on addition and subtraction facts and strategies we use to add and subtract numbers quickly and fluently. We also learned and played three games to practice addition and subtraction facts:  Make the Sum, Target Twenty, and Blast Off to Space.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her favorite math game from the week!


In Reader's Worskhop, we continue to build our reading lives and finding ways to make reading a positive experience this year.  We first talked about making a system to help others find great books in our classroom: book recommendations.  As children finish books, they can fill out a recommendation form and place in our binder in the library.  Other children can peruse the binder when looking for a new book!  We also began to talk about the purpose of reading: comprehension.  We started a whole class book, Stone Fox, and we will be using this as a mentor text to practice comprehension strategy through the rest of the unit.  The first strategy we practiced was asking questions.  Ask your child to tell you a little about the book Stone Fox.

During Writer's Workshop, we continue to learn about ways that writers generate topics for stories.  One ways writers gather ideas is by thinking about memories.  The children listed their ten best memories so far in life in their writer's notebooks and then chose different memories to write about.  Writers also write about what is important to them.  The children created Heart Maps with pictures and words to show what they value most in life. Throughout the year, they can return to these heart maps for ideas as they write.  Be sure to ask your child about his or heart map!

The children have also had the opportunity to work Jeff Badillo, our technology integrationist.  He introduced them to the chromebooks; taught them how to log in to Google; and taught them how to use Typing Club.  We will begin the year by learning and practicing typing skills to help make our work with technology and writing easier and more efficient for the rest of the year.  Mr. Badillo also went over the SCS Chromebook Responsibility Agreement.  These are a set of expectations in regards to use of technology and the chromebooks while at school.  You and your child must sign the agreement and return it to school.  Ms. Deb's class has already received this form. It is coming home today in Miss Niles' Friday Folders.

Lastly, we had a visit from two representatives of the PTO. They came to our team to talk about the fall PTO fundraiser.  Your child should have come home with a packet with all the information.  Please know that your child does not have to sell any items...this is optional.  However, if your child does sell items, some of the money comes back to our team to help fund some of our field trips.  Thanks for considering!  Have a wonderful fall weekend!  Enjoy another weekend of sunshine!

Shelburne Farms

We had a great day at Shelburne Farms!  The weather was just perfect!  We went to the farm to work on a community building project: making pizza.  We split into four groups and each group was responsible for creating one part of the pizza: dough, sauce, cheese, or toppings.  The children then had to create an artistic piece to share about their part of the process with the other groups.  Some groups created poems and skits and others created songs and drawings.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her role in this pizza making process!  Here are a few pictures from the day!

A huge thank you to our "Nearby Nature" parent volunteers in both Esprit classrooms for a wonderful lesson about spiders this week.   Through this lesson we took a close look at web spinners and wandering spiders, examined their anatomy, and considered their special adaptations. We earned about their lives as small predators, and scouted outdoors for spiders and webs.