100th Day of Kindergarten

Today was the 100th Day of Kindergarten. Mrs. Potts classroom visited my office and showed me how they could count by 10's up to 100. The students 100th day hats were very neat.

Dress Up as a Favorite Book Character Day!--Monday, March 3

From the Pine Glen Library & Technology Center . . .

SNOW DATE: Friday, March 7

Dress Up Day Flyer

Third Grade Wax Museum

The following pictures are from the 3rd Grade's Massachusetts Biography Wax Museum. I am very proud of all the 3rd graders and the great job they did researching famous people from Massachusetts. I had fantastic conversations with many famous people such as Dr. Seuss, Clara Barton, Abigail Adams, Deborah Sampson, Benjamin Franklin, Johnny Appleseed, and Paul Revere.

Illness and Communicable Diseases

The following information is from the Pine Glen Elementary School Handbook.  The information relates to students health and wellness.

Illness and Communicable Diseases
Children who have indications of a communicable disease should be seen by their health care provider.  In order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases and to insure rapid recovery with a minimum of after-effects, it is advisable to keep a child home from school when he/she shows such symptoms as vomiting, diarrhea, fever over 100°, chills, congestive cough, runny nose, sore throat, or skin eruptions, etc. Your child should be free of any of these symptoms for at least 24 hours before returning to school. If any of these symptoms are found in a child at school, the parents will be notified and the child will be sent home.

PLEASE DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILD TO SCHOOL WITH THESE SYMPTOMS WHILE AWAITING A CALL FROM THE DOCTOR. YOU WILL ONLY INFECT OTHER CHILDREN AND FURTHER SPREAD THE DISEASE.

All communicable diseases, when diagnosed, are to be reported to the school nurse. Please call the school nurse at 781-270-1713. Please inform the school nurse of any conditions/illnesses and/or medications that you child may have. When reporting, please include the following information:

NAME OF CHILD
ROOM NUMBER
IS THE CHILD UNDER THE CARE OF A DOCTOR?
DOCTOR’S NAME
NAME OF THE DISEASE

The nurse will then be able to check on the classroom for further spread of the disease and report the illness to the Board of Health, if necessary.

The most common diseases and their periods of isolation are as follows:

CHICKEN POX - All lesions must be completely crusted over and dried before the child can return to school.

STREP INFECTION - STREP THROAT - SCARLET FEVER - Without medication, the child must remain at home for 1 week. The child may return to school 24 hours after medication is begun. It is necessary that all medication be taken as ordered.

IMPETIGO - Affected students may return to school after using medicine for 24 hours. The sores should be kept lightly covered until they have dried up completely.

CONJUNCTIVITIS - The child may return to school after using medicine for 24 hours.

HEAD LICE - If your child has been found to have head lice, he/she must be treated immediately. Your child may not return to school until treated and nit-free. Your child must be cleared through the school nursing office before going back to class.
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All-Town Band Concert

The 5th annual All-Town Band Concert will take place on Thursday, March 6 at 7pm in the Burlington High School wooden gym. All band members grade 4-12 are participating. For more details go to elemband.wordpress.com. Any questions please email Mr. Napierkowski at napierkowski@bpsk12.org

Great to be Back!

It was great to come back to Pine Glen Elementary School today. I missed the students and staff. It was especially fun to do walk throughs.

Below are a few pictures from my walk through. In Mrs. Agati's music classroom, I saw students singing and reading sheet music off their iPads. Mrs. Fitzpatrick's fifth grade classroom was organizing decimals from least to greatest. This hands on instruction utilized student's higher order thinking skills such as classification and categorization. Ms. Hayes' fourth graders were doing research on areas of the country that combined the social studies curriculum and math Common Core standards.

It is wonderful to see students learning and having fun at the same time.  I greatly enjoyed coming back today to this incredible warm and caring learning community.

Message from Burlington Girl Scout Troop 77235

Burlington Girl Scout Troop 77235 is working on their Bronze Award. The troop is hosting a food drive to benefit the Burlington Food Pantry. From February28th to March 13th, food donation boxes will be set up in the lobbies of  Fox Hill School, Pine Glen School, Francis Wyman School, and Memorial School. The food pantry is in need of pasta, pasta sauce, breakfast foods such as oatmeal and cereal, and any other non-perishable foods. The troop will also be at Shaw's in Burlington on March 8th from 12-4pm to collect food for the pantry. Please help this great cause.

Water Wheels and American History

The blogpost below is from the Science Center blog.  

Connecting STEM and American History Through Water Wheels February 12, 2014

Posted by MrMusselman in Science Center, Student Work. 
Tags: engineering, Grade 3, interdisciplinary, Mr. Musselman, Pine Glen, video
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Across all of the Burlington elementary schools, third graders visit the Boott Cotton Mills at Lowell National Historic Park as a keystone piece of their social studies curriculum. While there the students learn about the conditions that made Lowell such a great place to cradle the American industrial revolution and get a chance to see and feel what living in and around the mills at the time would have been like.

With Social Studies and Science sharing a block of time, the teachers at the Pine Glen school used the Lowell Mills experience to develop a relevant engineering challenge for their students: constructing water wheels that work!

In the week following the students trip to the Mills, Mr. Musselman from the Science Center introduced the challenge by sharing a short video of the simple machines at work in the Boott Mills and a brief presentation explaining how they were connected to a system of canals and water wheels beneath the mills. The following days were spent using the design process in to accomplish the students engineering goals of developing a water wheel that would rotate many times under the flow of a two-liter bottle of water.

Students impressed with a variety of water wheel designs, some that worked better than others. While students worked independently to create their first water wheel “prototype,” students watched one another’s test runs to glean valuable knowledge and experience about which design flaws to avoid, and which to emulate in their own water wheel improvements.

Many of the products were held on to and stored by the Science Center to use during this year’s National Science Teacher Association’s conference in Bostonwhere Mrs. Jane Lynch, Mr. Musselman and a few Pine Glen students will be sharing their experience with fellow science teachers from across the state and country as they challenge themselves to build water wheels of their own and bring the experience back to their classrooms!

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Changing Matter Blogpost from the Burlington Science Center

The blogpost below is from the Science Center blog.   

Exploring Changes in Matter January 30, 2014

Posted by MrMusselman in Science Center. 
Tags: Grade 4, matter, Mr. Musselman, Pine Glen
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Mrs. Visocchi’s fourth graders took on an ambitious new challenge from the Science Center over the past week. Students were asked to explore a variety of physical and chemical changes and determine if new substances of matter had been created or whether the matter there had simply changed form.

Students were first challenged to share what they knew about changes in matter around their home and school. From there, investigations were underway as students observed what happened when different types of matter such as ice, chocolate, salt water, and kool-aid were heated up. Many students realized these changes did not create new substances, but others were less sure and curious about the mysterious gases rising from some of the different pans of melting material.

More investigations were run the next day as groups of students moved from station to station exploring the changes in color between cabbage juice and many home cleaning fluids, the “reaction” between alka-seltzer and water in a rapidly expanding plastic baggie, and the observable decomposition of an apple left out for several days.

 

All the while students recorded their observations and shared evidence with one another of whether new substances had been made or not. For a grand finale, students observed the change in sodium polyaclorate and water to form “instant-snow” and designed experiment to see if a new substance had been made or if the water could somehow be extracted from the powder again. A few experiments were put to the test, with some powder left out by the window sill over the weekend and others put to the test by Mr. Musselman and his closed system of pipes and graduated cylinders designed to capture the mysterious gases rising from the snow (which were discovered to be water!)

All in all the week long investigation was a huge success, with student performing hands-on investigations, using persuasive evidence to support their claims of new substances being made (or not) and digging deeper into matter, its forms, and its properties. We thank Mrs. Visocchi for allowing her class to be a “guinea-pig” for new lessons from the Science Center we hope to bring to other schools in the future!

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Valentines Day Movie Night

Movie Night0001

BHS Hockey to the Purple Palace

On Wednesday February 12, 2014, the BHS Red Devils and the Stoneham High SchoolSpartans will participate in the Coaches vs. Cancer game for the American Cancer Society.

Both teams are dedicating this game to help the American Cancer Society save lives and create a world with lesscancer and more birthdays. The teams will play in honor of two young men who have both been courageously battling cancer, Marty Wells of Burlington and Brandon McCarthy of Stoneham. Raffle items, purple bracelets, 50/50 will all be included in this fun evening. The games will be held at the Burlington Ice Palace on February 12th. The Boys’ game begins at 6:15 p.m. and the Girls’ game at 8:00.

February Early Learner Series Reminder

The next session of the Burlington Public Schools Early Learner Series is Thursday, February 6. The session will take place from 6:30pm-7:30pm in the Room B3 of the Burlington Early Childhood Center (BECC). The topic for this month’s discussion is reading with your children at home. We will cover how to pick literature, ways to engage your children with books, as well as supplemental activities to compliment what literature you have read. As usual, we will leave ample time to answer questions, address concerns, and troubleshoot any existing challenges you may come across in this area. We look forward to seeing everyone Thursday night! -Tiffany D’Abbraccio, M.S.Ed. and Naomi O’Brien, M.Ed, BCBA

Planning Board Meeting about Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana

Community Supported Agriculture Program in Burlington

Burlington Presbyterian Church and Farmer Dave’s, a sustainable farm in Dracut, MA, continue to bring locally-grown, fresh fruits and vegetables to the town of Burlington with a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. In the CSA program, consumers receive a share of freshly-harvested produce throughout the growing season. Shares are picked up on Monday afternoons from 4:00 – 6:30 p.m. at Burlington Presbyterian Church, 335 Cambridge St. The Spring season starts on March 3 and runs 14 weeks. Farmer Dave’s also offers vegetable shares (June-October), fruit shares (July-October), and late fall shares (November-December). For more information about 2014 CSA membership, contact Ginger Turner at (978) 349-1952 or visit www.farmerdaves.net to register.