Abbey building her robot.

We are "under construction" this week as the children create their recycled robots for our cultural celebration on Friday, October 24th. Our humanoid da Vinci robots are an adventure in human ingenuity. Many of them have moveable parts, storage compartments, and even jet packs!

They also give us a great opportunity to talk about the value of recycling and the difference between living and non-living things.

The children are also learning about the life cycle of the pumpkin, the parts of the pumpkin and the bones of the skeleton.

We are asking that each child bring in a medium size pumpkin on Monday. We will be investigating each one by by measuring the circumference and how much they weigh.

Thank you to Saathvik's mom, Lakshmi, for reading to Ms. Lisa's class and for all our volunteers for the da Vinci project! The robots are coming to life!

If you would like to volunteer for anything, please go to the sign up list here .

I'm sure you all heard about the great time we had at Sweetwater Farm on Monday! We all learned a lot and had fun at the same time. The children learned about composting, planting seeds, and caring for plants. They were able to feed some chickens and got to meet Sweetie, the farm pig. Each child made their own seed pot and planted scarlet runner beans. Thank you to the parents who were able to drive! It is a huge help and very much appreciated. 

This week the children have been working on different projects for the cultural day. They were able to paint the coat of arms that they made in art class. Yoga was a big hit on Tuesday! The children all had a great time. 

The first book report is due Oct. 13. The form that went home is not something they have to fill out. It is just a choice if they do not want to do any of the other 25 choices given. If your child comes up with an idea that is not on the list, they are welcome to do it! We already had some children present their book reports and they have all been fantastic! 

This week we have been busy working on our cultural projects. Students have begun building and creating their suitcases to present their projects, making the passports and getting ready for an exciting trip to Europe and Oceania. We hope you are as excited about this Fall's cultural festival as we are. It is sure to be a wonderful day of discovery, food, fun and community. **If you have any brown packing boxes that you could offer the school, we would greatly appreciate it. We are using the boxes to make our suitcases and still need quite a few boxes to complete this activity.

Our first field trip is set and we are excited for the opportunity to visit the Tampa Port Authority. The Port offers guided boat tours to the public and we will be visiting on Wednesday, November 5th. We will be leaving promptly at 8:30 that morning. We are also looking at the possibility of visiting either the Tampa Bay History Museum, or the World War II SS American Victory Mariners Museum. If you would be willing to drive that morning, please contact Mr. Greg.  

Thank you very much for the support you've shown by attending conferences today. For those who have yet to set-up a time, please e-mail Mr. Greg and we will set a time one day after school.

For our math facts, we are working on 6x tables. Please practice with students at home to support our work in the classroom. Many students could still use practice with previous work, especially the 3x, 4x, 5x tables.