Rock Star Update 11/21/17

Good Evening, 
The most recent Newsletter went home today with a lot of important upcoming dates, and it will be added to the website shortly.
Here are a few highlights since the past update:

STEM
Each morning Tropical students line the hallways from 7:55-8:25 waiting for the door to open and the learning to begin.  I have always opened my door to my students so we can chit chat, and they can read in their own room.  Well, the past two weeks I have started something different. The students come in and unpack QUICKLY so they can get to work on a STEM task.  They have quite a few bins to choose from, and once they pick a material, they pick a task card and work on creating their masterpieces. If you have any "materials" laying around and not being used, please send them in.  I am searching garage sales for Lincoln Logs, Magnaformers, Legos, etc...anything we can build with! If you see any for a decent price anywhere, let me know! 

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Here are a few that I LOVED from this week, I still have more pics on their phones to look at!! 
Rock Stars made: The Leaning Tower of Pisa, a seesaw, a cube and they were working on a dresser!
Meet the Masters

A warm shout out to Dawn, Ryker's mother, for coordinating our first Meet the Masters Art project with the kids. They learned all about Native American art from Michelle, Ella's mom and then worked on creating their own pinch pots with Dawn, Michelle, Derrick (Landon's dad) and Laney (Spike's grandmother.) They made some neat pinch pots!  We hope you can find a function for them at home, because that's what Native American art is all about, making things you can use! 😊  Thanks so much to all of you for coming in and making memories!

Luggage Tags
Last Friday we celebrated Gabriel's birthday party, and Alicia gave your rock star the CUTEST party favor, a personalized luggage tag. We attached them to their backpacks, but you of course can take them off and put them elsewhere. They are super cute!

Thanksgiving
The past couple of days a handful of students were not present.  We did the next two Math lessons, 4.1 and 4.2, and a lot of fun stuff as well. Please clean out their folders because I sent home a lot of stuff that we did not get to for Thanksgiving. You can do it with your Rock Star or recycle it!!!  I don't want any of those papers back. 
Lastly, Happy Thanksgiving!!  I am VERY thankful that I have not only 20 amazing students, but 20 supportive families as well!  I tell the kids all the time I feel like I won the lottery this year!  Enjoy your break, I will miss the kids so much!

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