Celebrating Valentines Day at The Lab!
Valentine's Day is this Friday! Students may exchange cards and we will also be doing "appreciations." Homemade cards are wonderful and students can create these at The Lab or bring them from home. If you send cards, please make sure you send one for all students in your child's class. But please DO NOT SEND CANDY! For food and "treats," there will be a Valentine's POTLUCK celebration from 11:30-12:30 hosted by our wonderful Madres a Madres volunteers with yummy dishes and cup cakes to celebrate. Please join us and bring your favorite Valentines Day dish!
SAVE THE DATE! PARENT WORKSHOP on Homeschooling and Independent Study.
February 21st from 6:30-8:30 (Childcare provided)
Note: Date is tentative as we are still waiting for confirmation from the guided reading trainer. Watch for confirmation of the date early next week
Please join the Lab Parent Volunteer Group for a workshop designed to support you as homeschooling parents and also teach you a method you can use at home to strengthen your child's reading skills.
The workshop will cover:
1. Working well with your Charter School teacher - what is an AWR (Academic Work Record) and how to use this at home and at The Lab
2. Grading, What's that? Learn more about how Charter School teachers "grade" your child's work and how to communicate effectively with them about this and other things
3. 31 Flavors of Homeschooling: Picking the right homeschool/independent study charter school for your child. The differences among iLead Exploration, Epic, Inspire, Sky Mountain, and others
4. Guided reading: A technique you can use at home to build your child's literacy and reading skills
A new addition to The Lab's K-3rd classroom Readers/Writers Workshop curriculum
We are excited to announce the addition of a formal phonics program next week for our "emergent readers" in the K-3rd classroom. Next week we will start the launch of Columbia University's Phonics under the guidance of our balanced literacy consultant, Courtney Kinney.
Happenings in the K-3rd grade classroom
During Reader's & Writers workshop, students are continuing to work on their "personal narratives" and our early readers will be working on our new phonics program. In addition, as a special writing project, all of our younger students will also be drafting their own "class play" based on the masks and backdrops (see the display in our hallway) they made during the last WOW! Art Workshop series. Younger student will dictate the stories they have drawn to students from Mr. T's class who will serve as their scribes. Older students will draft their own scripts with support from Michelle and Katherine.
During PBL Curiosity Studio, students are continuing to work on their project, "A day in the life of a bug. They are adopting an insect to study, learning about the insect world, and researching and preparing a presentation on their "bug" for The Lab students and families.
Finally, this week was the conclusion of The Lab's Reggio-Emillia inspired arts workshop on the Latin American artist Tamayo and look at the joy on our young artists' faces!
Students began the series by creating masks and studying opposites and duality of warm and cool colors. Then they moved on to creating 2-D representations of human figures inspired by Tamayo's human figures.
In each session, literacy development and math concepts are integrated into the art lessons with students learning about shapes, dividing, intersecting lines, and word recognition and vocabulary.
Today in Phase 2, students constructed a 3-D figure representing the human figure in motion. And then selected vocabulary words to describe their figure. Each one of our young artists are excited to share their work with their families.
Next week, the next WOW! art workshop series will begin and will focus on the art and architecture of Northern Africa and Egypt!
Happenings in Mr. T's class
Students in Mr. T's class are wrapping-up work on their informational essay on an activist they admire. Students are writing about activists such as Malala, the Parkland Teens, teen Climate Activists like Isra Hirsi and many others. Don't miss the author's chair which is coming-up end of February. It's sure to be inspiring.
Last week Mr. T's students finished their "Body Books" project for Curiosity Studio. For this project, students selected biological systems in the human body, conducted on-line research on them, and then created an illustrated "children's book" on the system they selected to present to our younger students. There were amazing books and presentations on the nervous system, muscular system, cardio vascular system, and skeleton just to name a few!
This week students in Mr. T's class will start their next PBL Curiosity Studio which will focus on Slavery - it's history and what is still happening today. Students will research the history, economics and geography of slavery. Analyze the forces that allowed it to exist. And write a message they want to share with others who might not know about the forced labor that is happening today.
Students also participated in a fantastic art workshop with our own Brian Kinnaman. In honor of the Chinese New Year, students learned about Chinese Landscape painting and created their own works of art using papers of different colors and textures.
Events and Dates to remember
February 17th - Presidents day - The Lab is CLOSED
TLP Education is offering Parent's Night on February 14th as well as homework help. Be sure to check the flyers in our window and also above the coffee stand
The Lab Needs....
We have gone "green" with our coffee stand and are shifting to reusable "keurig" cups so please bring in ground coffee for us to use!
We need SNACKS! Fruit, noodle cups, mac and cheese in cups are always appreciated. No candy, chips or soda though.
The Lab needs Playground materials. The Lab needs fun things to do on the back playground. Balls, games, etc. If you have any games or equipment you think might be