Guest Readers

Hello, Giraffe Families!

We will begin having weekly Guest Readers in the Giraffe Class. As a guest reader, you can bring in 1-2 picture books to share with the class and help us grow our reading brains! All family and friends are welcome :) If you are interested, please sign up for one of the dates listed on our Sign Up Genius. If the dates/times listed do not work for you, please reach out to me and we can arrange another time for you to come in.

We will also begin having Center Volunteers every Friday. As a volunteer, you would be helping the giraffes with either a math/literacy game or a craft activity. All friends and family are welcome to come in to volunteer. If you would like to sign up for one of our available slots, please click here! If the dates/times listed on our Sign Up Genius do not work for you but you would still like to join us, please feel free to reach out so we can figure out a time that does :) Thank you for your support!

Scholastic Book Fair

Hello, Giraffe Families!

SMS will be hosting our Annual Scholastic Book Fair the week after Thanksgiving (November 26th-30th). Our class will be going to the book fair to shop on Wednesday, November 28th from 12:45-1:15 pm. If you would like your child to purchase books, you are welcome to join us for this shopping time or you can send your child in with money to purchase a book on their own with the help of a teacher or parent volunteer.

If you would like to shop at the book fair at another time, the Book Fair will be open for business for families and community members during the school day and after school for the following dates/times (and please note that cash, checks, and credit cards are all accepted forms of payment):

Monday 11/26: 8:30 am-4:00 pm

Tuesday 11/27: 8:30 am-4:00 pm

Wednesday 11/28: 8:30 am-6:30 pm

Thursday 11/29: 8:30 am-4:00 pm

Friday 11/30: 8:30 am-10:30 am

You can also shop the Book Fair online between November 15th-November 28th. 

We are also looking for Parent Volunteers to help us with set up, break down, and running the registers at the book fair during the school day. If you would like to volunteer, please click here and sign up for one of the available time slots. 

Not only does the book fair help to get great books in the hands of students to bring home, but it also raises money to get great books and literacy programs for our school. Thank you for supporting our reading!

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

On Friday, we went outside to explore our school garden and get it ready for fall planting! 

We met a few of our PTO Volunteers out in the garden to help do some fall planting. We planted daffodil bulbs that will grow into beautiful flowers in the spring!

We each put on a pair of gardening gloves and grabbed a shovel before planting our bulbs in the ground

One of our twins even got to plant a "twin" bulb!! 

Afterwards, we got to explore around in and around our garden, looking for plants and insects and sharing what we already know about gardens with our friends

We looked at many of the fallen leaves and acorns that were on the ground around the garden and we were able to determine that the leaves we found were from maple and oak trees, and we learned that maple leaves turn red because of all the sugar in their leaves! We love watching the leaves change color outside, and we can't wait to see our daffodils brighten up our garden in the spring. 

Scholastic Book Fair 11/27-12/1

The Scholastic Book Fair will be at SMS the week after Thanksgiving! This is a great opportunity to buy gifts for friends and family for the holidays. While the giraffes will have the opportunity to go shopping during school on Wednesday, 11/29 from 1:15-1:45, anyone is welcome to come at any time during our shopping hours, which are listed here:

11/27 - 8:30-4:00

11/28 - 8:30-4:00

11/29 - 8:30 - 6:30

11/30 - 8:30-4:00

12/1 - 8:30-11:00

We are looking for volunteers to help with:

• Set up on Nov. 21 from 12:00-3:00
• Cashiers and restocking shelves during the school day 8:30-12:00 and 11:45-3:10 time slots.
• Packing up the fair on Dec. 1 from 11:00-2:30

If you can help at the fair please click here to sign up for a time. The profits we make from the fair go back into SMS classrooms and the library, so the money raised from your purchases will go directly back to supporting your children and their classmates. We hope to see you there, thank you for all your support! 

Calling All Mystery Readers!

Sign up to be one of our Mystery Readers! Starting after Thanksgiving, will have Mystery Readers every Thursday from 2:15-2:45. If you would like to be a Mystery Reader but are not available on Thursdays at that time, please let me know and I'd be happy to find another time that works for you.

When you are our Mystery Reader, please bring 1-3 books to share with us. You will receive an email a few days prior to the date you've signed up for. Please email me with 3 clues about yourself so we can try to guess who you might be! Examples of clues would be: I went to UNH, I have blue eyes, I have one brother, I used to work at a camp, etc. The trickier the clue, the better! Click here to sign up!

A Busy but Exciting Week in The Giraffe Class!

Aside from our play, this was a BUSY week in the giraffe class!One of our favorite parts of the week involved preparing for our Volunteer Appreciation Celebration! 

We have been so lucky to have many different parent volunteers helping us out in the giraffe class this year, and we wanted all of you to know how much we appreciate your "thyme" :)

All of the second graders worked together to recite an acrostic poem about volunteers, but our favorite part of the assembly was 4th grade's groovy new song! 

We also got to get outside this week to plant some swiss chard seeds in the garden as well as plant some great new books in our brand-new Little Free Library as part of #GKP17! Not only did we fill the library with lots of awesome garden books, but we also filled it with bookmarks filled with fun, positive messages. 

We got to share these books with our 5th grade buddies on Friday afternoon!

Another little buddy hopped on by to join us :) can you see him camouflaged in the tree bark?

We also got to read our letters from our #GKP17 buddies in New Jersey! We learned so many cool and interesting facts about them, and it turns out we have even more in common than we thought!

We especially loved their silly stickers and awesome illustrations! 

Lastly, in math, we got to have some fun with pattern blocks as we jumped into fractions! 

If the hexagon is one whole, then each trapezoid is a half, each rhombus is a third, and each triangle is a sixth!

In this design, each equal part is a rhombus. One rhombus is a seventh.

In this design, each hexagon is a sixth

In this giant rhombus, each tiny rhombus is a sixteenth! 

We also got to explore fractions with a fun new game we learned called the line game! First, players work together to make an array of dots--it can be 3x3 or larger! Then, each player takes turns connecting the dots with one line. The goal is to complete a box. If you complete a box on your turn, you write your first initial in the box and then you get another turn. Once all of the dots have been connected and all of the boxes are complete, players count their total number of boxes in the array (denominator) and then count the number of boxes they scored (numerator). The person with the biggest fraction wins!! 

This is an AWESOME game to play on a road trip or on a rainy day at home-- all you need is a piece of paper or a whiteboard and a writing tool :)

While our days will continue to be busy in the weeks ahead, the fun has just begun!