Lower School News from The Swain School

Lower School Events

There have been many exciting events at The Swain School these last few weeks.

Thank you to Bob Stoker (co-president of the Swain Association) and all of the fantastic Thanksgiving_Feast

volunteers who participated in the preparing for and including the day of, the annual Thanksgiving Feast. The students and faculty had a great time (right) and we all really appreciated the time and effort the parents gave that special day.

On the day before Thanksgiving break, we performed the annual Thanksgiving Assembly. Congratulations to all the drama_teacher

Preschool through Fourth grade students and their wonderful teachers. A very special thank you to Robert Wagner (left), our drama instructor, for his creation and work on this very meaningful assembly. The Kindergarten students prepared their program and delivered a great show.

Mr. Wagner and the Kindergarteners introduced many of us to the artistic device called "tableau vivant". This is a French phrase that translates to 'Living Picture'. tableau

This theatrical device (right) was used to highlight important actions in our annual play that represented the historic interpretation of the Pilgrims and Native Americans and the marriage of John Alden and Priscilla Mullens. All of the Kinder-garteners had roles and they took great pride in their work on stage. It added to the traditions of the past and created a great new approach to celebrate our talented students. It also prepared all of us for the Thanksgiving Break.

In addition to the drama presentations from the Kinder-garten students, the Preschool through grade 4 students and their music teachers, Bonnie Cohen and Gail Ortner, spent a tremendous amount of time and effort in their music classrooms preparing for this program, and the performance was great. Thank you to all the teachers and most importantly, our students in the Preschool and Lower School.

We have just completed the 40th annual Holiday House Tour last week, and it was a great success! A huge thank you to our bake_sale

chair of this event, Sandy Stoker, grandparent of Robert and Patrick in our first grade.

We really appreciated all of the volunteers who helped organize the Holiday Boutique, especially the co-chairs Catherine Jager and Kris Falcone, the moms of middle schoolers Emma, Thomas, and Stephanie. A big thank you to these two talented individuals for creating such a lively and wonderful Boutique.

We certainly appreciated Chris Lentine (mom of fifth grader Peter) and her volunteers who organized the bake sale (above); the selection was scrumptious. We also thank all of the volunteers who helped with the individual house tours and especially the owner of the houses who graciously opened their homes for this annual event.

Another tradition that all of our

students can look forward to is when - as 8th graders - they will represent Swain by serving the guests at the holiday luncheon (right).

The entire Holiday House Tour event is a great tradition and a memorable time for all the children, the parents, and our visitors.

Yesterday morning the Preschool through grade 2 students sang morning_concert

holiday songs from around the world (left) and the grades 3 through grade 8 performed more songs that evening, at our two separate annual Winter Concerts.

Thanks to all the students, but especially to Bonnie Cohen, Gail Ortner, and Stan Moyer for preparing the students so well.

Although we are so proud of the great performances our students provide us and themselves, we can't forget that there were many wonderful activities that go on in the classroom throughout the past two months. Here are simply a few to highlight!

In Preschool, during the second half of the month of November, the students focused on the virtue of the month, Thanksgiving. The students took part in creating a bulletin board in the community room detailing what they were thankful for. In addition, in the classroom the preschoolers talked about families and the diversity of their own background. They graphed how many people were in each child's family and used words such as more, less, most, and least. It was a great opportunity to discuss and describe their results as a class.

In December, the preschoolers have been learning about three December holidays - Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. The preschoolers were introduced to many words on the "flannelboard" that helped coordinate with each theme. They focused on the initial sounds and letters of the vocabulary, as well as the traditions that accompany each holiday.

The preschoolers are looking forward to January when their focus will be on shapes, colors, and winter happenings. We are very proud of our preschool teachers and their wonderful students. This is certainly a great program; these youngest students at Swain are learning a tremendous amount and are building very essential skills to prepare them for our Prekindergarten.

To learn more about the world around them, Prekindergarten students have recently sent "Flat Stanleys" (a book about a boy who is flat, to friends and relatives in other states and even other countries). The students have started to receive replies and are enjoying the wonderful pictures and writings of
Stanley's experiences. The class will be compiling their replies into a Flat Stanley journal which will eventually circulate among all families in the class.

In November, the Prekindergartners took a trip to the America on Wheels Museum to learn about past and present forms of transportation. This was an extension of their lessons on the past, including the study of the Pilgrims and their coverage of the decade of the 50's. It helped compare transportation of the past to the present.

The students also enjoyed dressing up to celebrate our 50th day of school. On that day, the Prekindergarten students and their teachers all dressed up and had 50s_party

a "swell" 50's party. During that day, they compared life in the 50's to life today. All of the boys and girls enjoyed watching a 50's Betty Boop cartoon, had a smash doing the limbo, tried hula hoops (right), and danced to 50's music as well as having root beer floats for their snack. It was a fun day enjoyed by all.

Last week the Prekindergarten classes had their annual Pajama Day with the Preschool classes. They enjoyed breakfast together, and then heard the story The Polar Express as they pretended to ride on a train. They did some singing and had a visit from Santa before they returned to their individual classrooms to have a stuffed animal show and play some fun games with their animals.

Also this month, the students have been learning about how animals prepare for winter and how they spend the winter months. They have worked to create a hallway display showing that some animals hibernate, some migrate, some stay active, and some change the color of their fur and are camouflaged so they blend in with the snow. Go and see the display if you get the chance.

Yesterday, following the Winter Concert, the Prekindergarten class presented their first group story to the parents, and served festive snacks. Each child dictated a page of the story and created a poster size illustration. This is the first of several stories for the book to be published for the auction! The Prekindergartners also created a giant Gingerbread Man from found materials to go with their first story.

For Fun Friday, all Preschool and Prekindergarten classes rotated rooms to learn a little about December holidays. Glenda Akers spoke about Christmas traditions in Spain, while other teachers covered Christmas in USA, and shared the traditions of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

In Kindergarten this past month, our "Writers Workshop" theme was 'small moments'. According to Jillian Zepp, during this theme the students worked together and wrote from their hearts. During writer's workshop, the teachers help their students understand that they can create stories from the details of their own experiences. As a class, the students learn how to catch the small moments from their lives and then learn to write about them individually. The students take these small moments and "stretch" them out in their own writing.

The teachers are proud of the Kindergarteners' progress thus far, and congratulate them for doing such a wonderful job. Please stop by the Kindergarten hallway and see the great examples of these first time authors taking the plunge into writing. How exciting and how important! (above, Jack shares his writing)

In addition to many other activities being covered in first grade, the students have completed an Author Study during their writing workshop program. The students have studied author Leo Lionni. The first grade students wrote stories based on his book's characteristics and how he wrote his books. Abby Monahan said the student writing examples were wonderful and will be celebrated at a later time. Stay tuned and look for that announcement.

Also, last Friday, as a part of the first grade global studies program, the first graders were parading around the building with their constructed gondolas castle

while listening to Italian music. This was an activity they did while studying Italy. Last month, each student constructed a German Castle and had them on display in the Rogers' Commons (right).

These activities are a part of their social studies program that will study different parts of the world this year. Off they go to Antarctica next.

The students in the second grade have presented fantastic stories. The stories have also been written during their writer's workshop exercises in school. They created imaginative, creative, and well-designed stories that they have read orally to many of us this past month or so. Thanks to Mary Garton, Louise Christensen, and Carol Scerbo and their students for sharing their writing skills with us these past few months. I can't wait to hear more.

Last week the third graders were busy solving "a mystery". Under the leadership of Kelly Fragin and Karen Richards, mystery_party

many parents in costume (left)created a mystery that the students had to try and solve. Thank you to the third grade parents for participating.

The puzzle was complex, and the third grade students had a fun time solving the problem. This was a great activity that stimulated the student's creative minds and helped them find ways to problem solve and connect the individual pieces of the puzzle to solve this mystery. "It's elementary, Watson".

In the fourth grade, the students have been writing poetry in addition to their other writing responsibilities. The fourth grade students submitted Haiku poems in a local competition. All of haiku

our students wrote fantastic Haikus, and four individuals were recognized out of the hundreds of other local school students that submitted Haikus in this competition.

Jacob (above right, with Mrs. Hazelton), one of our fourth graders in Karin Reger's room, was one of the winners of the Haiku competition. He was asked to read his poem at the Christmas Tree Lighting in downtown Allentown with six other elementary school winners.

The following fourth grade students will have their Haiku's displayed in Allentown's store front windows: Jacob, Simon, Alea, and Tyler. Congratulations to our poets!

In November and December, the science lab has been busy.

The third grade scientists did a fantastic job with their simple machine inventions for their "science expo". They really enjoyed all of the simple machine labs and building their own machines. They are currently completing a unit where they are Water Quality Analysts. They have obtained water samples from home and are testing them for pH, Iron, Copper, Chlorine, and hardness. They are learning the importance of each parameter related to drinking water and to water in general. Be careful, the third graders may let you know you have scaling issues on your tub and why.

In second grade science, the students are in the middle of a unit called "Before the Dinosaurs". They have watched an amazing DVD created by Discovery that takes the children from the beginning of the Earth into the Triassic age. They will be building timelines when our DVD is completed. The science students have also learned the six characteristics of all living things and have had a review of threatened, endangered, and extinct species.

In first grade science, the students are learning about conservation, threatened, endangered, and extinct species. We are discussing the difference between hunting and poaching and why hunting is important to the conservation of the populations of many species. The students are discovering all kinds of endangered and threatened species (especially those located in just Pennsylvania). There are a lot! They have also had a discussion about the beauty of a female animal versus a male animal and why the male is always more flashy than the female. The first graders have also connected the idea of extinction of dinosaurs with the extinction of many animals today.

In Kindergarten, these scientists have been working on their dinosaur unit. They know the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. They even did a science lab on this. Recently they have been talking about small, medium, and large dinosaurs and the three ages of the dinosaurs. We also discussed different dinosaur body parts and how they helped the different types of dinosaurs survive. In addition to dinosaurs, the students enjoyed going to the space shuttle and being astronauts. A special thank to the parent chaperones for their support on that fun field trip.

One example of how great it is to be a community member of a PS-grade 8 school is simply the connections that are made throughout the year between our older students and our youngest students at Swain. Just this past week, the seventh graders completed a children's book as a part of an academic continuum offered by Mary Gruber, one of our Middle School English teachers.

Each seventh grader was given kids_books

the responsibility to write a children's book and illustrate it too. The final products were phenomenal. Once they completed their books, they went to the Preschool and Prekind-ergarten classrooms and read their own books to our very own 3- and 4- year-old listeners (above, Peter reads his story, 'Peggy's First Kitten').

Both the older and younger students loved this interaction and it continues to create another reason why PS-grade 8 schools remain so special. Here are three examples of titles of our young author's children's books. All of the childrens' books will be on display in the Umansky Library until January:

Fish Makes a Friend by Brooke
Piano Dreams by Ethan
Barry the Selfish Dwarf by Thomas

The Umansky Library is one of the most lovely places on our campus, and we thank you so much for your support of the library at the Barnes and Noble book fair last month.

It is exciting to announce that The Swain School sales for the day were over $10,500 and the Umansky Library will receive over $2,100 to purchase new books for our precious Library.

In addition to building upon the great resources for our students, under the leadership of Kristen Armstrong, our Librarian, we are building a collection of resources for parents. Feel free to come by to check them out.

Below is a list of some of the quality resources for your reading:

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children (see more about this title, below)

The Blessings of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time

Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Kids the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry - (on order)