Hello Families and Supporters,
Happy Friday! We hope you enjoyed the beautiful sunshine today as much as we did. This week, our students had the opportunity to explore a sugar bush and learn more about how to make maple syrup on our first school wide field lesson of the year. Make sure to ask your children how to tap a tree, collect maple sap and what machine is used to make maple syrup. We thank SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) forest staff for helping us learn in Heiberg Forest!
Reminder, next week is Spring Break and there is no school for students or teachers. We hope all of our families and school community have a wonderful week. We will return to school on Monday, April 18th.
Families, please remember to send in an extra set of clothes with your child when they return from break. We plan on being out in the garden during the last couple of weeks of April and beginning of May. We expect mud and a change of clothes might come in handy.
Messages for Families
VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR FAMILIES FROM THE OFFICE: Today, Friday April 8, 2022. We will begin dismissal at 2:45pm with PARENT transported students. Please remember to pick up your child at 2:45pm. We will dismiss starting at 3:00pm with BUS transported students.
Ways to Help Our School
Volunteer to wash and return winter clothes from our borrowing closet
As winter weather comes to an end, we want to wash and pack away the set of winter gear we have for students to borrow. If you are willing to wash and return some or all of our winter gear over Spring Break, please contact Ms. Leaf in the office next week by calling (607) 842-6252.
Sign up for and use Amazon Smile with Truxton Academy as your chosen charity
Amazon Smile is a division of amazon that donates a portion of sales from many items to a variety of charities and nonprofits. Truxton Academy is one of those nonprofits. If you are purchasing items from amazon, please go to https://smile.amazon.com/ and choose Truxton Academy as your charity of choice. Purchases you are making anyway will benefit our school.
Donations Needed:
Extra Clothes: We are in need of extra clothes for our older kids who have spills or get clothes wet at recess. Our closet of borrowable clothes is in need of pants in size 8, 10, and 12 for both boys and girls.
Help up Build our Classroom Libraries:
Here is a wish list of books for each classroom. You can buy the books through this website or elsewhere. Thriftbooks has used books and sometimes that is a money saving option. Check out the books wanted for your child's classroom or any classroom:
Kindergarten: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/2beb98c2e6c22338/
First Grade: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/06f1868ff2b6582a/
Second Grade: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/8c00ddcdf9f8956c/
Third Grade: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/21f8fdfdb6f0eed1/
Fourth Grade: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/beda8187236a301d/
Spanish: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/66e046cb2e91fcc0/
Makerspace: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/af7a8e360eb91d94/
Fifth Grade: https://www.thriftbooks.com/list/share/2ec16518e195dde8/
Upcoming Dates:
4/8- Emergency Early Dismissal Drill- Parent pick-up dismiss at 2:45, buses dismiss at 3:00
4/11- 4/15- Spring Break- No School
4/18- Board of Trustees Meeting
Board Meetings are held in person at Truxton Academy Charter School in the pavilion, weather permitting, or in Room 105.
You can also join via Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/91567143586?pwd=cGM3bjZlemxGTGVtUmMwRk5WdG5iQT09
Meeting ID: 915 6714 3586
Passcode: 9ia1fw
4/19- Field Lesson to Twin Oaks Dairy for Ms. Elliott and Mrs. Francis' Class (Permission slip coming home today. Please return it on 4/18 when we return to school)
4/22- 3rd Quarter Report Cards Go Home
4/26 and 4/27- 3rd Grade State Math Assessment
4/28 and 4/29- 4th Grade State Math Assessment
Updates from the classrooms:
Miss Elliott (K):
This week in kindergarten we:
*Learned lots about maple sugaring on our field trip to Heiberg Forest
*Discussed similarities and differences while learning about different cultures during Ms. Wolf's lesson
*Read "There's Only One You" and discussed why it's okay to be different during Ms. Kendall's lesson
*Took a closer look at our snails and let them crawl on our hands during our science investigation
*Created our own Easter bunnies to decorate our classroom door
*Had a surprise visit from the Easter bunny and hunted around the classroom for the Eggs he left for us :)
Mrs. Francis (K/1):
This week in K/1 we had a busy and fun week! Ask your K/1 kiddo about:*finished up learning about R blends (including super tricky tr and dr)
*reading City Moon, Knuffle Bunny and Ragweed's Farm Dog Handbook
*starting our own "How to" books during Writers' Workshop
*practicing adding three, four, and more numbers together by counting on
*builing and comparing two digit numbers using 10s and 1s and writing number sentences to go with them
*learning which paper was best for writing on, folding, and what happens to the different paper samples when they get wet (does the water bead up or absorb?)
*holding the chicks- they're so fluffy and adorable!
*learning about mealworms from 2nd grade and then giving Rosie a mealworm snack
*having fun learning about and tasting maple syrup (and riding the bus was exciting too!)
*learning about strawberries and other plants when Mrs. and Mr. Sturges came in to do fun activities with us
Miss Smith (1st):
This week in 1st grade we: *Learned how to tell time by the hour and half hour! have your students show off their new skills at home! Have your student finish the following phrase, "When the big hand is on the six......." Ask them where they learned this from!
*Enjoyed the nice weather by going outside and creating our own clock!
*Had a field trip to the Maple Syrup Farm! Thanks to all the parents who volunteered to accompany us on this trip!
*Learned about syllables and different ways to figure out how many syllables a word has!
*Learned about pollution and the impact humans have on our Earth! We brainstormed activities we could do to help the Earth and learned about what it means to reduce, reuse, and recycle!
*Continued to write chapters for our "Our School" book.
*Filled out an application to be a classroom Easter Bunny!
*Learned a little bit about Passover!
*Watched our little chicks grow into fluff balls!
Ms. Jess (2nd):
Ask your Second Grader about...-their field lesson to Heiberg Forest and what they learned about their maple syrup making process,
-their lesson with Ms. Grace, our SUNY Cortland practicum student and why the world needs more purple people,
-teaching Mrs. Francis' K/1 class about the mealworm life cycle,
-playing the math game 10 More or 10 Less,
-their Earth Day project on protecting our trees.
Enjoy your break!!
Miss Madysen (3rd):
Ask your third grader about...-using connecting cubes to create patterns representing the multiples of 3, 4 and 6,
-how multiplication and division are related,
-the nonfiction text features used in our informational reading about volcanoes,
-the different types of nonfiction text structures (compare & contrast, sequencing, chronological, cause & effect, problem & solution) and how to identify them while reading,
-how they are coming in writing their first draft of their imaginative Easter roll-a-story
-which way water always moves,
-what they learned about maple syrup on their field trip to Heiberg Forest.
Have a great spring break!
Ms. Chelsea (4th):
Ask your 4th grader about:- How maple syrup is made!
- How to find equivalent fractions.
- The relationship between fractions and decimals.
- The difference between tenths and hundredths.
- The setting, main characters, and secondary characters of the short story they're brainstorming.
- Which genre their short story will follow.
- What energy is, what it's needed for, and what it does.
- What happened after the drumroll when we tried to turn our flashlight on for the first time- and why it happened.
Señora H (Spanish): This week in Spanish the K, K/1, 1 and 2 classes read a story and learned a new song about Los Pollitos, the little chicks. Here are links to two different versions of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVv7pIssaMchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUuB36yPyBM In 3rd and 4th grade we learned words and phrases relating to eating at a restaurant. Mrs. Boyden (PE): This week in PE we finished up our Team Building unit! Ask your child about some fun team building challenges. We also announced our PE Students of the Month! Congratulations to Claire Tice - 4th grade, Jaiden Sautter - 3rd grade, Hunter Harrington- 2nd grade, June Christy- 1st grade, Brea Towers & Miles Richmond in K/1 Class & Juno Ackerman - Kindergarten. Mrs. Boyden (Makerspace): 3rd & 4th Graders did an egg drop experiment! With a partner they had to design and build a contraption to keep an egg safe from a 9.5 foot fall. 2nd graders created large mazes to challenge each other with a magnet egg race through each other's mazes! K&1 classes, heard the book The Good Egg then we drew pictures of our own good egg and also colored eggs! We did an experiment with white eggs vs brown eggs being colored, ask them how it turned out! THANK YOU ALL who donated eggs for our fun learning activities! Check out our facebook and instagram pages for pictures of our students' learning throughout the year: https://www.facebook.com/truxtonacademy
Thank you as always for your support of our students and our school family! Have a wonderful weekend and a great Spring Break!
- Sara and the Truxton Academy Team