November 22, 2015

Greetings,

As we head into the final days of the month, we thought we'd take a spin around the building to catch up on "all things November". Enjoy our tour!

	Second grade teacher Carol Scerbo used our monthly virtue of "Thankful-ness", along with Veterans Day, to showcase gratitude. Students in her class shared photos and stories of their relatives who have served our country - and she framed this interesting display (in the Community Room) with the words 'thank you' in different languages.
	Our friends in Mrs. Takacs and Mrs. Viqar's PK room shared their ideas about what they're thankful for.
	Mrs. Scerbo again - incorporating language arts lessons into a colorful turkey.
	This colorful edition of yet another majestic turkey was created by Mrs. Takacs and Mrs. Viqar's PK students.
	Turkeys even show up in our PE classes, where Mrs. Henning is offering her annual "Turkey Trot" 25 mile challenge for third graders - that's 100 laps around our athletic fields!
	"Turkey Talk" also hit the door of our Lower School Science classroom - with lots of interesting facts about the fowl that Benjamin Franklin wanted to name the national bird.
	Mrs. Akers and Ms. Sesh's PK class used their new measuring skills to show how large The Mayflower was. They looked at pictures and found that 102 Pilgrims and a crew of 30 men lived for 66 days on a ship that was about 100 feet long and 25 feet wide. They decided that the tape measure was the best device to use, and started at their classroom and measured both the length and the width. They discovered that The Mayflower began at their classroom door and ended by the Cougar Cafe. They decided it was a very small space for so many people! Click for more images.
	And it wouldn't be a November at Swain without the popular "I'm not a turkey" project by Mrs. Pugh's and Mrs. Schenkel's third graders. They are tasked with providing a disguise and new persona, to help the turkeys help escape their November fate. Check out their clever solutions here and on the bulletin board outside the Cougar Cafe.

We hope you will join us on Wednesday for our annual Thanksgiving assembly, featuring performances by students in grades PS-5, and the Kindergarten tableaux ("frozen pictures") depicting the story of the Pilgrims. The program begins at
10:30 a.m. in The McCann Center, and everyone is welcome! (The students in grades 1-5 should wear their special dress uniforms.)

Thanks for reading Swain Stories, and have a wonderful holiday! (No Swain Stories next week - we're on holiday!)

The Swain School
1100 South 24th Street
Allentown, Pennsylvania 18103