Thank you, too, to everyone who came for parent conferences last week. It was a nice opportunity to share news about your children. We feel fortunate to have such a wonderful group of children in Lower El!

This week in class, the Youngers have been reading to their Older reading buddies and to a teacher; using the addition strip board to learn (or to solidify) their addition facts, working with compound words; reading and spelling short "e" or short "a" words; coloring and labeling maps of Europe; as well as pursuing their many choice works.   

 

The Middlers are working on dynamic addition (adding with exchanging) with the stamp game or bead frame; studying "nk" words; practicing their addition facts; testing their command of grammar with the symbolizing sheets; and working on their cursive. They collaborated on a report on snails, which they shared at All School Gathering this week. They proved to be eager researchers. 

 

 

Many of the Olders have been studying "ai" words this week; working diligently in their multiplication books; and reviewing "masculine" and "feminine" nouns. They are learning the names of geographical locations on the biome map of Europe and answering questions about this continent. In addition, they remain enthusiastic about their atlases! They were also excited to receive their science binders. This is where they will record the results of their science experiments.

 

Everyone has been testing out our latest experiment - Heavy Objects Sink - with kitty litter, ping-pong balls and metal bolts.

From our history lesson on the Timeline of Life, we have branched out to a biology study of the five kingdoms of life. In this lesson, we use the chart of "the hand of life."  Each finger represents one of the big groups, or kingdoms, of living organisms: prokaryotes (the first kind of life that existed, the bacteria), protoctista (very simple organism that live in the water), fungi, plants, and animals. Our poster of the "tree of life" is another way to understand the five kingdoms, with the branches used in place of the fingers. The main idea of this lesson is to impart that human beings (scientists) have organized (or classified) living organisms into groups to better understand and study them. 

We'll end with some reminders: 

• Please continue to check your child for ticks; those hardy arachnids are still out!
• Please, if your child does not have a water bottle at school, send them with one on Monday.
• Please send in sneakers on Tuesdays and Thursdays for PE, or keep a pair here at school.

Thank you - and enjoy your weekend!

Jessica, Kerstin, and Connie  

Phew, I'm glad that's over!

On Thursday the fifth graders participated in the second annual Garlic Project planting day. Our fifths joined fifth grade students from Academy, Oak Grove, and Green Street Schools for a half day of planting garlic and garlic-related activities here at Hilltop. Our students did a great job serving as hosts.  

 

 

Thank you's

Thank you to the Coffey Snyder family for donating this year's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award  (DCF) books to the Upper El classroom. Every year thirty books are chosen to be on the DCF list of books. Children in Vermont who read at least five of these books are invited to vote for their favorite book. One author is awarded the DCF award each year. Upper El students have been diving into these books. Thank you Sara, David, Izzy, and Daniel!

Thank you also to Jennifer Sutton for making the curtains that now hide what lurks beneath our classroom sink! 

"Between two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone, ...we beheld the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees....The glimmering shadows, that lay half asleep between the door of the house and the public highway, were kind of spiritual medium, seen through which, the edifice had not quite the aspect of belonging to the material world." (from Mosses from an Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne 1854).

The Middle School passed through this veil of history during our trip to Concord, Massachusetts yesterday. We went to Concord to deepen our understanding of the Transcendentalism movement and the impact it has had on our society. After a visit to The Orchard House where Louisa May Alcott immortalized her family's story in Little Women, and The Old Manse, the former home of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, students wandered down to the huge rock where the Hawthornes, Emerson, Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Margaret Fuller once gathered to converse and enjoy the natural beauty surrounding them. After a short seminar, we explored the Concord River and the famous North Bridge and found a place to paint and reflect. As Emerson commemorated: 

On top of it all, it was an incredibly beautiful day.  As Nathaniel Hawthorne describes from his time at the Old Manse:

"If ever my readers should decide to give up civilized life, cities, houses, and whatever moral or material enormities, in addition to these, the perverted ingenuity of our race has contrived, - let it be in the early autumn.  Then, Nature will love him better than at any other season...."

The transcendental movement centered in Concord is often called the second American Revolution as it represented the first focused philosophical and literary group in America and forwarded the ideals of the great experiment.

A transcendent time was had by all.