Half Day Childcare - Wednesday 11/19/2008

Wednesday November 19th is a half-day at ISM. After School International will be providing childcare for students on this day. Students will be able to come to the program and have pizza lunch and a fun filled afternoon. The cost for this one-day of care is $35.00 per student for the day and care will be available until 6:00 pm.

Please print the form (PDF) out and return it with $35 to Miss Lisa Wichael-Loomis prior to Wednesday, 11/19.

Saturday Work Day - 11/15 9:30am to 1pm

Just a reminder that tomorrow, Saturday, 11/15 is a work day at ISM. This day will be chaired by Marco Poehner and will be a general sprucing up and cleaning day around the campus. The hours are 9:30am to 1:00 pm so if you need to get in those volunteer hours, please join us at the ISM campus.

Thank you!

Mission Project (Due Monday, 11/24)

Dear 4th Grade Parents,

On Thursday, 11/13/2008, your child was given the information for the mission building project they will complete for social studies. The information is below in case the paper didn't quite make it home (how does that happen?)

The due date for the project will be Monday, November 24th. This is to give you two (2) weekends to work on it as well as the weekdays. We will begin presentations on that day and hope to get all of them completed before Thanksgiving to include the grade in their report card.

I hope this will be a fun project for your child. Please let me know if you hit any big snags.

Best wishes,
Mary Welsh

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Building a Mission (due 11/24/2008)

Your mission model project is worth 100 points. You will build a model of an imaginary mission and give an oral presentation about your design.

Imagine you have been asked to add one more mission to the mission system of 21 locations here in California. Your mission may use some ideas from existing missions, but it should have its own name, appearance, and design. You will construct your mission’s buildings using air-dry clay, beginning with the church building which you will build at school. We may construct one small building at school using brick-by-brick adobe style construction, if time allows. We will have some time to design the layout of your mission at school, but you should plan to build most of the buildings at home. You may use other building materials (cardboard, popsicle sticks, clay, Legos, or other) if you like, as long as they fit the same scale.

Your entire mission complex must fit on a 12” square cardboard so it can be displayed in the wire shelves at school. You can decide which buildings to include and how they should be laid out.

Your model itself is worth 50 points, 10 points for a well-constructed model, and 5 points for showing answers to each of the following:

1. Where do the different types of people sleep?
2. Where do they work, and what work do they do?
3. Where do they grow their food?
4. Where do they cook and eat?
5. Where do they worship?
6. Where do they place the bodies of the dead?
7. How do they defend they mission against enemies?
8. Where do they get water?

Your oral presentation (2 to 5 minutes long) is worth 50 points: 10 points for presentation skills (loud, clear, expressive voice, strong stance, eye contact with the audience) and 5 points each for answering the questions below. You may refer to written notes as long as you can maintain eye contact with the audience. Please practice at home.

1. Who lived there? (Be sure to name the native group, and tell about all the different kinds of people in the mission.)
2. What did the members of the community eat?
3. How did the mission earn money?
4. How did they worship?
5. How did they protect themselves?
6. How did they stay healthy?
7. What were the main differences faced by this mission?
8. What were the advantages of this mission?

ISMF Gala and Auction 2009 - SAVE THE DATE

This year, our 6th annual World Neighborhood Gala will be held on Saturday, April 11, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Monterey. Last year's event netted just over $50,000 - with your support we hope to do the same or better this year.

If you have any questions, please contact Carrie Miles at clmiles33@aol.com.

Parent Update 11/10/2008

Dear 4th Grade parents,

Thank you to all the parents who helped chaperon and drive for last Thursday's field trip to the Cooper-Molera adobe and the Custom House. We all learned a lot in both the hands-on programs and had fun making rope, branding leather, carding wool, making and eating tortillas playing old fashion games and acting in or watching a play. Thanks to Sonia Perez, Barbara Okamura, Janice Harrell, Christine Colon and Merilee Kolpaczyk for their help.

I enjoyed the parent-student conferences on Thursday and Friday. The students all did a great job presenting their work, reflections and goals to their parents. I am very proud of all of them. I will finish conferences this week on Tuesday and Wednesday. The grading period ends on Nov. 25th, just before Thanksgiving. Report cards will be distributed on December 9th.

Congratulations to all of the participants of the Big Sur Just Run foot race last Saturday! We had a nice showing of 4th graders in the event. Everyone did a super job of running and putting out their best effort. It was a fun and well-organized event and the weather turned out just right.

The Food Drive continues this week. On Tuesday, Nov. 11th, we will get 15 points for every can of vegetables brought in. Wed. we will get 15 points for every can, box or bag of soup. Thursday – 15 points for every dessert brought in and Friday 10 points for peanut butter and jam.

Wednesday afternoon, Joey Durrell Canapa from the Beach Garden Project will return to our class to teach the students how to propagate the seeds we collected during our field trip to the dunes a couple of weeks ago. Once planted, she will take them to grow at a greenhouse and we will take them back to the dunes to plants the seedlings in the winter.

There will be a Veteran's Day celebration with the whole school tomorrow, November 11th starting at 9:00 am. The Seaside High ROTC color guard will raise the flags. Congressman Sam Farr will be there to speak to the students and Mr. Pearlstein will unveil and raise the "dream flags" each student at school made. You are welcome to join us to honor our country's veterans.

Grandparent's Day will be this Thursday morning. Grandparents attending the event will go to the multiuse room for a presentation then to the classrooms at about 9:30 am. This will be during Spanish class for our students.

Math: Please read the "Parent Letter" 3.12 in the Study Links book for the upcoming unit 4. Math homework this week will be Tuesday Study Links 4.1, Wed. 4.2 and Thursday 4.3.

The spelling test will be on Friday. The test is on the words the students received last Monday.

Have a great week,

Mary Welsh