For those of you who were able to join the Zoom meeting yesterday- it was so good to see your faces! I hope you found the intro to Zoom useful and use it to visit with your loved ones and friends virtually. I have included a link for you and/or your child to sign up to meet with me via Zoom once a week if you would like. Right now I am scheduling meetings on Thursdays and Fridays but if any of the times I have offered don't work for you please contact me and we can arrange something else. At this time I am using the meeting as a check-in and brief chat and have scheduled approximately 10-15 mins for each. As you might have noticed yesterday, most of the children lose interest after 5 mins or so. 
Mrs. Farber and I also wanted to provide you with one space you could go to for all of this learning info and so have put together a joint Google site for our parents. It includes suggestions for websites you and the children might like to explore arranged by subject and each weekly learning plan will be posted there so you can have them all at your disposal as needed without having to chase down the links. This is a work in progress and will continue to be added to and modified as time permits. We are trying to anticipate your home learning needs and hope you find this useful. If you have suggestions for things you would like to see included on the site please contact either one of us. 
If either one of these links don't work for you or you have any other questions or concerns, please contact me. 
Be safe. Be well.

As always, I hope this post finds you and yours healthy and well. Mrs. Farber and I have completed the home learning plans for this week and I have emailed you the link. I would also like to offer you and Team Awesome some choice boards to supplement the weekly learning plan if needed. Please use the weekly plan first. You and the children can choose  activities that fit your time, technology, resources and interest constraints. If the children are choosing activities that require a paper component, please have them put their name and date on it and have a safe place to keep them or send a photo/ video to the link included in the weekly learning plan. An exercise book or notebook of some sort where all of their paper work can be done makes it easy to keep everything safe and organized. At this time we are not sure what or how we will be assessing their learning so holding on to anything they have done will help later. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact  me.

​Young children are inherent measurers and this is reflected strongly in everyday language when they compare, order and match – I can swim right across the pool now; it’s too big for me to lift; it won’t fit in the box; my hand is bigger than your hand. Personal experiences, such as playing with toys, interactions with other children and conversations with parents all reinforce children’s early development of the concept of attributes that can be measured. Students need experiences that lead to an understanding of why measurement is necessary and helpful. They need to work with non-standard units and to create their own measuring instruments, and to discover for themselves the necessity of having standard units and the efficiency of having measuring instruments to count the units. Team Awesome has been exploring length through hands-on activities with these objectives in mind and will also play with the concepts of weight, area and capacity.

We are going into the end of our second week at home and I know many of you are searching around for activities to keep Team Awesome on top of their game and your mental health intact. Scholastic has offered a free Learn at Home series with online videos and books as well as little accompanying activities leveled by grade. They have added a link to a Daily Reading Quest which offers a list of a few discussion points for children and adults after a shared book reading. Although there are only 20 days of short lessons posted it could be used in addition to what Mrs. Farber and I send next week or zipped through on your own time over the weekend as the need for distraction arises. 

I have been looking at and learning how to use online meeting spaces this week so although we can't meet in person, Team Awesome and I (and you) can keep in contact in real live time and see each other. I think Zoom will be the easiest platform for everyone to use as it can accommodate a large number of people per meeting and seems fairly user-friendly. I thought it would be fun to schedule a lunch chat with everyone next Monday, March 30, to get a feel for Zoom and the children will have a chance to see and speak with me as well as each other. If you are unable to join on Monday, I will be scheduling other meetings so please don't feel obligated if it doesn't work for you.
As in our classroom during discussions there are online protocols so everyone has a chance to speak, such as raising our hand, waiting our turn and listening with our hearts as well as our heads. There is a button to indicate their hand is raised, they can mute/ unmute their audio, they can turn their video on/ off and there are various other things for us (including me!) to learn. I would like to use Zoom to meet with children at least once a week. I am also hoping you will use it to communicate with friends and family and have the children visit with each other virtually. Online play dates if you will. There is no cost and a very quick download when you sign in to the the first meeting. Look for an invite in your email as it will contain the link. Here is a quick video tutorial on how to join a Zoom meeting if you want to look before Monday. Check YouTube for other tutorials on how to use Zoom. See you Monday!

Explaining to children why we have to stay away from school and be in the house for an extended length of time can be complicated but sometimes we underestimate how much children understand. Here is a good video explaining why it is important to physically distance ourselves from others right now and an easy experiment you can do with just black pepper and soap to bring home why it is necessary to wash our hands often.