Friday, October 22, 2010

Hunger...

Dear Mom & Dad,

This week we have been talking about seasons, specifically autumn, our current season and what it means to me. We talked about the different weather for each season and some of the things I will get to wear as the weather changes. We talked about all of the holidays and celebrations that happen during certain seasons. Although I am very excited about special meals and even getting special treats and gifts on certain celebrations during these upcoming seasons, there are so many people out there who are not as fortunate as we are. Like as the weather turns colder and we pull out my winter coat, there are some kids that do not have the extra money for a new, warm coat. We have been talking about all the ways we can help. We are collecting Coins for Coats. When I find some loose change, I can put it in Harley, Mrs. Maggart's piggy bank that holds our collection.




On Thursday, we filled up a whole cup! Wow ... that means we were able to donate those coins to help someone. We want to keep filling Harley up and keep collecting those coins. It makes us feel good inside that we can help someone else.

We have also been talking about how we can help people who know all too well the word HUNGER. We talked about the definition of the word hunger. I guess when I say "I'm hungry," I don't mean it like those people who really do not have the extra food that I do. We talked about words that mean the same thing as hunger. Those words made us feel a little sad because we don't like to think that there are people, and even kids, in our community who feel this way everyday. We talked about words that mean the opposite of hunger. We really liked these words. We decided that we wanted to think of ways to help people feel these words and to help with hunger in our community.




We read this book about how the character, Strega Nona, who had too much food, was able to share with those people in her village who didn't have a good harvest and didn't have enough. She was able to keep them from being hungry during the cold winter.


We worked with a buddy to brainstorm all the ways we could help, just like Strega Nona did. We even made acrostic poems about HELPING Hunger. Next week, we are going to learn more about what all of first grade can do to help fight hunger.

This week, we read a fun story about how we all have dreams or ideas to something special one day and how we have to do certain things today to make that dream come true.
We wrote "Someday" pieces too! Here they are hanging on our publishing wall, and even a few up close.




On Friday, we got to celebrate our 25 earned compliments that we received this school year from adults all over TvE. We had Funny Feet Day and got to wear our silliest socks and fuzziest house shoes while we learned.







Next week is Red Ribbon Week and we have a whole week of special things planned, including our ROCK SOLID Safety program on Monday morning at 8:30. We will also have a special reader do "Boo Reading" on Friday followed by a fun puppet show on Friday afternoon. We will also be doing our pumpkin investigation next week. Thanks for helping me bring a pumpkin or 2!

Love,