Hi Everyone!

BARACK OBAMA RALLY
There is going to be a rally to celebrate the election of Barack Obama tomorrow (Friday) at Ray at 2:45 in the auditorium. We will not bring our class down because we'll be sleeping and it would be overwhelming for them. But thanks to Sophia's mom, we're planning a rally of our own at 3:30 in our classroom. Have your child wear an Obama t-shirt, hat, etc. (no buttons, please), or a Ray School tshirt. We'll have a special reading of the new book, &quot;Barack.&quot;

THIS WEEK:
It's been a great week, topped off for me by our trip today. We have been reading Laura Numeroff books all week (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, etc.), but it was so much fun to see Emerald City's interpretation. The kids were great and I think really enjoyed the play. We're now considering whether to take them to see Hansel and Gretel in December. Please let me know if you have an opinion on this.

We brought out some tubes this week with our colored tape. The kids have been making sculptures, especially swords and binoculars. Carter made an airplane out of cardboard pieces. I'm hoping we'll continue enjoying working on 3 dimensional art pieces.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HELP WITH THIS, WE NEED:
<ul>
	<li>small boxes (cracker or cookie boxes, cereal boxes, etc.)</li>
	<li>more tubes (t. paper, paper towels, wrapping paper, etc.)</li>
	<li>masking tape</li>
	<li>other recyclables that would be cool in a sculpture</li>
</ul>
Later we'll be working with wire. If you have any access to telephone wire (the kind that is bundled), please save some for us. We'll also need some wire cutters.

CAPRI SUN BOXES:
We haven't gotten any boxes back yet! Please do your family box so we can share it in school. If you need help, let me know. Remember, seal the box first. Then cover it with the construction paper we gave you. Then decorate it with family pictures, etc. We'll cover it with plastic.

If you have any extra Capri Sun boxes, please bring them in. If you haven't received one yet, let me know and I'll make sure you get one.

NOVEMBER
This month we'll be continuing to learn observation recording skills (tallying, drawing what we see, knowledge webs, etc.). We'll be adding doing 3 dimensional replications of what we see (Thanks, Carter!), using cardboard, paper, clay, etc. All this is working up to doing real project work - learning deeply about real things. I don't know if we'll be able to do a project before the holidays - they take up a lot lot of our attention in Nov. and Dec. Last year the children were very interested in volcanos, so we studied volcanos a lot during the second half of the year. I'm not sure yet what we'll be studying this year - it depends on what grabs us. But we'll be sure to let you know.

The day before Thanksgiving break (Tuesday, Nov. 24, we'll be having our Thanksgiving celebration. We hope you can all come. We'll hold it from 3:30-5:00, and pizza and juice will be provided by the PTA as our Candy Sale party! I'm hoping we'll also have homemade pumpkin pie, baked by the children. Please mark your calendar. (Maybe I should re-do mine and make it right!).

We'll also be learning about Native Americans and Native American stories. For those of you who don't know, Ms. Robin is Ojibwe from Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, Canada. Last year she shared authentic traditional items from her home and family, and taught the children how to dance and drum. I'm hoping we can do that again this year. We'll be reading stories from Gerald McDermott and Joseph Bruchac, as well as listening to traditional music from the northeast and southwest. Please let me know if you have anything you would like to contribute to this project. One year we got Ms. Robin to make Fry Bread with us - I bet she would do that again with some encouragment!

HOLIDAYS:
We recognize that Christmas is a giant holiday for many or most of our children, but we want to make sure that all the traditions of our children are celebrated. If your family celebrates a different holiday in November and December, please let me know. We will be talking about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, as well as Christmas. I like to spend a lot of time in December talking about light and why we use lights/candles to celebrate holidays. Again, if you have anything you'd like to contribute, please let me know.

PHOTO BOOKS
If you haven't developed your child's photos from photo day yet, please do so and bring them in. We'll start making our books next week.

COLD WEATHER CLOTHING
I hear we may be getting some snow soon. Please make sure your child has snow clothing every day so we can go out in it. They'll need:
<ul>
	<li>Coat (you can keep a sweater in the cubby in case we need layering)</li>
	<li>Hat or hood; scarf if you'd like</li>
	<li>Waterproof snow pants</li>
	<li>Waterproof and warm boots</li>
	<li>Waterproof and warm mittens or gloves</li>
</ul>
PLEASE WRITE THEIR NAME ON THE TAG FOR EACH PIECE OF CLOTHING!!!!! You can't believe what a challenge it is to keep track of all these clothes!

<span style="font-weight: bold">Wish List:</span>
3 or 5 oz paper cups
cocktail straws (shorter than regular ones)
empty food boxes and other items for 3 d projects
string
masking tape
yarn (esp. red, black, yellow, white)