Week of February 8

Daily Student Health Screener:

Click here for a checklist of symptoms and situations to keep a focused eye on this year. The teachers are logging daily health checks, as well. We are doubling down on health and wellness in efforts to protect our ability to meet for in-person learning. Thank you for your cooperation on this.

Scholastic Book Orders - Due Thursday February 11:

Each month, I'll be sending home a set of Scholastic book order forms. Ordering books is completely optional but is a fantastic way to grow your at-home library collection at a low cost.

Each book that is ordered helps our classroom to earn free books for our class library and the students LOVE to see what new books we receive each month.
If you are ever interested in ordering books as a gift and want me to set them aside for you to pick up, please let me know.
You can click the following link to place an order through our class ordering page: https://orders.scholastic.com/L63HX

Count Day is this Wednesday:

Wednesday is count day! This is an important day for our school in regards to funding. Please do everything you can to limit non-urgent appointments on this day. Of course, if your child is ill or exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19, please keep him/her safe at home.

Yearbook Ordering:

It’s time to order your 2020-21 yearbook! This year all sales will be done online at http://www.geskusphoto.com/?YB=3716

Please place your order by Monday, February 15. Contact Sheri Baker at sheribk@gmail.com with any questions!

Lego Night:

Lego Night is happening this year - from home! There is a build challenge, coloring sheets, word searches, crossword puzzles, and build sheets to create mini mosaics.
We are challenging our student family to build something that represents one of their favorite things about Brown School. Take a photo and share it using the "Build Challenge" link on our site below to be entered to win one of 5 Lego sets. If you don't have your own Legos, no problem. We would love to see your builds using any materials on hand!
https://sites.google.com/view/brown-virtual-lego-night/home

Valentine's Day:

February 14th is approaching fast and, of course, things this year will be a little different. It just so happens that the 14th is on a Sunday this year and students do not have school on Friday the 12th or on Monday the 15th. So, hold off on the candy and packaged valentines, here is the plan...

During the week of February 8 - 11, our Positivity Project (P2) activities will be focused on "Love." Their definition of love is that you value close relationships with others and being close to people. The character strength of love represents the way we think, feel, and behave towards the people with whom we have close relationships.

Our class will have activities and lessons throughout the week that will take the place of the traditional card exchange. No need to send anything in from home, we will handle it all in-house.

Calling All Bear Cubs!

Young Five & Kindergarten Registration (pandemic style) is coming on February 25th! Visit sjschools.org to register for this drive-thru event at SJHS. Current Y5 & ECDD students do not need to attend.

Please spread the word to family, friends, and neighbors who have a child that will be five years of age by September 1, 2021. We can't wait to welcome our new little bears!

Mrs. Bawks' Brown School Family Blog:

Please don't forget to take a peek at Mrs. Bawks' Brown School Family Blog each week. CLICK HERE to read it.

Important Upcoming Dates:

Mon. 2/8 - Virtual Variety Show registration forms due: https://docs.google.com/.../1yWTv7lKY7xW.../edit

Wed. 2/10 - Late Start - school begins at 9:45am

Fri. 2/12 - NO SCHOOL

Mon. 2/15 - NO SCHOOL - Yearbook orders due online (see above)

Tues. 2/16 - 1/2 Day of School (Dismiss at 12:34pm)

Wed. 2/17 - Late Start - school begins at 9:45am

Thurs. 2/18 - Virtual LEGO Night (see above for details)

Wed. 2/24 - Late Start - school begins at 9:45am

Thurs. 2/25 - Y5/Kindergarten Round-Up Event - register to attend at sjschools.org

This week's learning:

Positivity Project (P2): This coming week we will be focusing on the character strength of "love" - You value close relationships with others and being close to people.

ELA: This week, we will be continuing to focus on making inferences and drawing conclusions. We will:

-identify evidence in a text to support a reasonable conclusion.

-make inferences to understand ideas implied by not stated in a text.

Looking to help your child connect what they are learning in school at home? Click on the image below and check out the activities:

Writing: This week we are continuing our persuasive writing unit. This week we will be focusing on writing a conclusion, adding examples and adding anecdotes.

Math: This week we will continue diving into our multi-digit multiplication unit! You may notice that the home link packet is out of order; we have decided to re-structure the unit to better teach and extend the concepts within this unit. They are in the order that we will be teaching each concept in class - you can find the schedule of lessons we will teach each day this week below so you can plan which pages to work on to extend the skill from that day. Please continue to work on mastering single digit multiplication fact fluency at home each night (this can be done with flash cards, using an online program or any other method that words well for your child).

Monday: Continue Lesson 4-6 (due to snow day on Friday)

Tuesday: Lesson 4-9: I can multiply 2-digit by 2-digit numbers

Wednesday: Continuing Lesson 4-11: I can find the area of rectangles and rectilinear figures using multi-digit computation.

Thursday: Lesson 4-12: I can solve multistep multiplication problems and use estimates to assess the reasonableness of my answer.

Friday: No School

Looking to extend your child's learning in math at home?

I highly recommend having them work on Khan Academy (we use this in class)! Students have access to the assignments that I've put onto Khan Academy for them (they use these during our math workshop time) and they can also work on their "course mastery." Khan Academy will continue to work them through 4th grade concepts and beyond (for those students who are ready to begin learning skills beyond the elementary level) and provides video explanations to help them work through the content. They also have courses to practice reading and language arts, computer programing (Pixar in a Box has historically been very popular with students in my classroom!), growth mindset, careers and much more!

Science: This week your child will be learning about the brain’s role in receiving information from the senses, processing that information, and then controlling the body's muscles to enable movement. We will play a game in which we test our reflexes. The fact that our reflexes always have a slight delay will help your child to see that there are real pathways (nerves) on which messages from the brain have to travel.

One thing you can do to support your child’s curiosity is to play a round of the “reflex” game together at home. All you need is a ruler or cooking spoon—ask your child to explain the rules of the game to you (we will be performing our in-class experiment at the end of the week so you may want to do these activities next weekend). Ask your child about the “dollar bill” challenge too! As you play these games, there's an opportunity for a great discussion about how the brain requires time to send a message to your fingers.

Social Studies: This week we will continue learning about the human characteristics of the Unites States. Big ideas from this lesson are:

-Geographers use physical and human characteristics to describe what a place is like.

-Human characteristics of a place are man-made features.

-Human characteristics of a place can include cities, highways, bridges, and buildings.

-Human characteristics are often closely connected to physical characteristics. For example, cities are often located near bodies of water and farms are often located in prairies.

Homework: Homework each week consists of reading 20+ minutes at home (this can be a library book, magazine, newspaper, online book, etc) and practicing multiplication and division facts 1 through 12. Mastering multiplication and division facts is vital to our learning this year.

Students will also have a math home link page to work on most days of the week. I will always include the lessons we are working on in the blog each week so that you know when to work on each home link. These home links are not going to be turned back in, but I highly recommend that students work on them each week so that they can show you what they have worked on. I don't mind if students work a bit ahead in the packet; it is also ok if you miss a night and have to come back to that particular lesson on a different day. Times are unpredictable and I completely understand that you may have prior commitments on certain days of the week.

Photo Gallery!

Check out some photos of our learning this week: