Red Clover Celebration Day

April is the time of year when the Vermont Red Clover Book Award is given to a book chosen by Vermont's children. Each year a committee chooses 10 new books which are sent to the school librarians all over Vermont. Teachers and librarians read these books with the children several times over several months and decide on their favorites, then the children get to vote. The book voted for by the majority of Vermont's elementary school children wins the Red Clover Award (the red clover is Vermont's state flower). This year both the students at UMS and the elementary students throughout Vermont chose "Born Yesterday: The Diary of a Young Journalist" as their favorite. UMS students and staff spent today celebrating all 10 Red Clover nominees through art. The whole school began our afternoon celebration by watching skits depicting the 10 books put on by teachers. Students then were put into mixed grade groups and moved between two different stations around the school getting to create art projects representing two of the different books nominated for the Red Clover Award. In the evening, families came to school with their children to get a chance to participate in many of the same art projects, getting a chance to try out stations the children didn't have a chance to go to during the day! What a great day and thank you to all the families who came this evening! Below are some photos from both the afternoon and evening Red Clover stations.

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Spring Reading Challenge

Over April break students are challenged to read as many books as they can and record them, then bring their record sheets back to school after break. In February students brought fish sheets home to record their reading. Today newsletters with butterfly sheets will be coming home to challenge kids to keep reading over the vacation!

4 Winds

This month our 4 Winds lesson taught us about many different types of camouflage used by both predators and prey in nature. We did lots of great activities to practice camouflaging an object and finding camouflaged objects outside! I sent a 4 Winds newsletter home yesterday telling about what we did. This is the first time we have received a 4 Winds newsletter, so I hope it gave you a better idea of the neat science things we have learned this year!

School Colors Spirit Day

Many, many people at school had green and blue on today. The two of us, however, were wearing almost the same outfit!

Smoothie Cart

The Wellness Smoothie Cart will be back at UMS for the whole week April 30-May 4 (the week we return from break). The one day it was here previously all kids got to try a smoothie at lunch but this time they will only be available to kids ordering hot lunch. Each day that week hot lunch students will get a fresh fruit/veg smoothie with their lunch in the cafeteria!

RAZ Kids

Today I introduced a great new reading resource to the class! It is a website called RAZ Kids that allows students to both read and listen to books at their specific reading level. It also gives them the option of taking a quiz after reading to check their understanding of the book. I created a new page on our classroom blog so that the students can log in on any computer. I showed the class how to get to RAZ Kids from the blog today as a whole group and will be working with them on it individually throughout the week. To access the website, go to the page titled RAZ Kids at the top of my blog (next to the other pages such as Literacy Links, Math Links, etc). You will find the link as well as directions for logging in there. This is a really neat resource that provides the students an interactive way to practice books at their specific reading level! Happy reading!

Spirit Week!

Next week, April 16-20, is UMS school spirit week! The schedule for the week is coming home on a flyer today and I am posting it below as well.

Monday April 16 Hat Day -- wear your favorite hat

Tuesday April 17 Favorite T-Shirt Day -- wear your favorite t-shirt

Wednesday April 18 School Colors Day -- Wear blue and green clothes

Thursday April 19 Fill a Bucket Day -- Give a compliment to a friend (this idea goes along with the book "Have You Filled A Bucket Today?" that all classes have read)

Friday April 20 Pajama Day/Picnic Lunch -- Wear your pajamas and have a picnic lunch outside (weather permitting)

5 A Day the Color Way

This week UMS is celebrating wellness in a few fun ways! The Colchester Food Service program has purchased a large smoothie making station to be shared between our schools' lunch rooms and today UMS had the chance to try it out! At lunch today fruit and vegetable smoothies were made for everyone to try at lunch. The smoothie recipe, created by one of our second graders, is coming home with students today so you can try it at home! Tomorrow the smoothie station is moving on for the other schools in town to try but after April break each of the five schools will get to have it in the cafeteria for a whole week. Today everyone got to try a smoothie but during the week we have it after break it will only be available for children ordering hot lunch. I will try to let you know ahead of time when that will be.

As our other way to celebrate wellness this week everyone is encouraged to wear a different fruit/veg color each day!

Monday RED
Tuesday YELLOW/ORANGE
Wednesday WHITE
Thursday GREEN/BLUE
Friday BLUE/PURPLE

Trip to the Food Shelf!

As you know, our whole school is doing a food drive to benefit our building's new neighbor, the Colchester food shelf. This week both our class and Ms. Barnett's class had our turn to collect and deliver food. Our class collected enough food to overflow a large cardboard box and cover half the big table in our classroom! Today after lunch and recess our class walked next door to the food shelf to deliver our food. This was a fantastic experience for the kids since we not only collected food and discussed the purpose of the food shelf all week but the kids got to bring the food there and see where it all goes! Each student carried over a bag of food collected from our class, donated it, then we got to explore the food shelf and ask our questions to someone who works there! We are learning to be community helpers! Here are some photos from our trip.

Create your own scrapbook

VSO Brass Trio

Today UMS had special guests from the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. All of the students gathered in our cafeteria to hear a performance by a brass trio from the orchestra, called Fanfare. The trio is made up of three people who play a trumpet, french horn, and trombone. The kids got a chance to listen to them play as well as to learn about brass instruments and how they work, then ask questions. The orchestra requested that we not take any photos or recordings of the performance but you can ask your child all about it!

Solids and Liquids

Our class is wrapping up our unit on solids and liquids! We began before February break with a week reading about solids and liquids, learning what matter is, and listing solids and liquids we know. We then spent three weeks experimenting with both solids and liquids! We experimented to learn many of the physical properties of solids (flexible, rigid, rough, smooth, transparent) and liquids (transparent, transluscent, opaque, bubbly, viscous) so now if you ask, your child should be able to tell you what these big vocabulary words mean! We experimented to learn how solids move and behave when we change the quantity of the solid in a container, how different liquids behave when shaken or rotated in containers, and how the level of a liquid changes when we pour it into different containers. We have worked on several other projects to learn about solids and liquids including a lapbook where students recorded findings from their experiments and a hands-on discovery where we made ice cream from scratch! We have had a lot of fun and learned many new things during this science unit! Below are a few pictures of children in our class experimenting with solids and liquids.

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