A note from the teacher...


April 5, 2020
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Hello Parents,

We made it through week 3 of school at home! Most of the children did a great job keeping up with their assignments. Thank you for your patience and help this week as we work through this. 

We starting morning meeting this week at 9:00. It was great to see so many of your children. My hope is that this will bring some normalcy to their life and to have an opportunity to answer any questions about their work and to see all of our friends. We also met with our reading groups on Thursday via Google Meets. Some of the children "hung out" and chatted after our group was over. I hope that this will work as a nice tool to get your children together. If you were not able to log in, please let me know and I can help you through the process.

April is poetry month and we are posting videos each day of the teachers reading a poem to the children. These are posted on our "Stream" page of Google Classroom. Your child can click on it each morning when they log into classroom. Our cultural activity on Friday was to write a Haiku. Your children did a great job with them and I will share them on our classroom page when I receive them. I am impressed each year with the poetry that 6-9 year olds write!

If you are having trouble finding the time between working at home, taking care of your family and helping your child complete his/her work, please contact me. We can set up a time where I can help them each day via Google Meets or by phone. Please do not hesitate to contact me if this would be helpful to you. 

Hopefully everyone had a chance to pick up their packet of work that was left in the blue bin on the porch at school. Please contact me if you have picked it up. 

Spring Break has changed and will start on Tuesday, April 7 as required by the Diocese. Therefore, we only have 1 day of school this week on Monday. We will have a morning meeting at 9:00 am on Monday, but not over spring break. Please do encourage your child to set up a meeting with their friends via google meets during spring break so they can "hang out" . I am happy to assist your child in setting up these meetings. 

I included worksheets in your child's packet through April 8 as that was the last day of school before spring break when I made the packet. This changed last week for us, so please just hang on to the April 7 and 8 work and we can use it going forward if we do not go back to school on April 20. At this point we have not received information from Mr. Barkley about extending the non-traditional learning. With that being said, it could happen and I will inform you if I hear anything. 

When your child completes the daily pages, the best way to turn them is to upload a picture to Google Classrooms. I will create an assignment for each one.  If you have trouble doing that, you can email it to me or turn it back in at school at the end of the week. In addition, everyone will need to log into Google Classroom each day to find their cultural work for the day. Each day, we will post some fun, outdoor and indoor activities that your child can have fun with while still learning. There will be step by step directions on each assignment. We will post 2 per day and your child can choose which one they want to do or do both. 

Some of the children picked up their Chromebooks from school. If it would make things easier, please contact me and we will arrange a time to pick up the Chromebook. If you have a device at home that your child can use and can log in to their school account that is great. If your child does not know their password, please contact me. If your child needs help logging in, also contact me and I will walk them through it by phone. 

We started our study of Australia. and most of the children have begun or completed their projects. If they have completed them, please have them take a picture of the artwork and send me their research. If they have not, please have them work on it some more this week.   The children will present in May. On the last day of school we will enjoy an Australian feast. All first graders and the second grade girls will be in charge of making a recipe from Australia to bring to the feast. 

​If you are interested in ordering books, go to scholastic.com/bookclubs. Our class code is TJZVN. Our class will get points for each book that is ordered. We can use those points to buy new books for our classroom library. 

Please continue to take care of yourselves during this tough time. You are in my thoughts and prayers daily and I miss seeing all your beautiful children every day.

Hope to see you all soon, 

Mrs. Rentrop




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UPCOMING EVENTS                                                         
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March 16-April 6 - Non-traditional learning at home
April 7 - April 17 - Spring Break - No School
   REMINDERS FOR THE WEEK
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 Mondays-log in to the library website and read a book

 Tuesday and Thursday - run around outside!  

Friday, March 27 -No sharing basket this week
​                                                                                                           Wednesday -  (3 minute talks will be updated when we return to school)