Oct. 15-26

The week of October 15th brought a short week full of one-on-one assessments in preparation for parent-teacher conferences the week of October 22.

Katie - the BV County Naturalist came to visit with our class about spiders.  She highlighted a lot of the information that we had already talked about with the differences between spiders and insects.  As always, the kids really enjoy their time with Katie.



We took some time this week to work in some cooperative groups.  We talked about how each group must work together as a team - with one person not being in charge, but with each person having an important role in the group.  It was easy to see which groups worked well together and which were struggling with power-struggles or inactive team members.  Working together cooperatively is a life-skill that we will work on DAILY this year.

The week of October 22 was a very busy one with parent-teacher conferences.  Thanks to all of the parents for their prompt attendance.  It was great to get your input and to be able to showcase the things your child has been working on.

Jeremy's family brought in several pumpkins for our class, so we chose to decorate 2 of the pumpkins and take them to the Newell Good Samaritan Center for the residents to enjoy.  We had fun painting them - and yes, somehow the Iowa Hawkeyes even made it onto one of the pumpkins!  :)

Mrs. Juilfs did a pumpkin Scholastic News with the group that wasn't painting pumpkins

We got a chance to visit the Newell Good Samaritan Center (NGSC) this week.  We had a great time on our tour of the center.  Many thanks to Diane and the other staff who made our visit special.  We got to visit many offices and rooms where staff and residents passed out treats for us to put in our special trick-or-treat bags.  We look forward to our visit next month as well!

We had a rainy day on Thursday and were not able to go outside to recess.  We usually have recess in our classrooms for morning and afternoon recess and recess in the big gym when it's a rainy day, but on this particular day, there were people working in the gym, so we couldn't even play in there at lunchtime.  Here's a short little video to dis-prove the assumption that indoor recess is boring or that the kids don't get exercise.  I assure you that most of the kids were sweating after recess!  We've found a new favorite thing to do - KidzBop!

We spent the afternoon today carving pumpkins.  Many thanks to Jeremy's family for providing extra pumpkins for our class.  We were able to get one pumpkin at our visit to the pumpkin patch, but thanks to Jeremy's family, we had an extra one to carve!  We saved the pumpkin seeds and look forward to having them as a snack in a couple of days.

The kids are really looking forward to Halloween and showing off their costumes in the costume parade on October 31.  I'm sure there will be some great pictures to post after that!  We are also celebrating the Newell-Fonda Mustangs football team and their appearance in the playoffs.  Go Mustangs!

2 Weeks of catch up

We've had a busy couple of weeks to start our October.  We had beautiful weather for our annual Fall Fitness Walk.  We all walked a mile and did lots of various activities and exercises.  The kids had a great time!  We ended the afternoon with an icy treat in the shade!  What a fun day!

This past week was fire prevention week.  We read lots of books about fire safety and firefighters.  We also had an ICN session with an Urbandale fire fighter.  He read a book to us and talked to us about his uniform and fire safety details.  We also did an experiment to understand the 3 things that a fire needs.  From our experiment, we learned that fire needs heat, air, and fuel.  We lit 3 candles.  One of them, we removed the heat (we sprayed it with water) and watched it go out.  Another one, we removed the air (covered it with a jar) and watched it go out.  And the last one, we removed the fuel (took the wax off the candle) and watched it go out.  The kids really enjoyed the experiment!

Many thanks to the Newell and Fonda fire departments that took time from their days to come to the school to talk to the kids about fire safety.  Logan, Ethan, and Barry, from the Fonda fire department visited with our class.  We learned about their uniforms and they even took us for a ride on the top of their fire truck!  It was so fun!

We've been doing lots of assessments getting ready to show our parents how much we've learned the first 40 days of school.  The kids have made great progress in so many areas.  It's been fun to see their academic growth, but it's also been fun to watch them become such good friends and encouragers to each other.