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= = Welcome to Mrs. Buckley's Sixth Grade Class!

November 14th

We all survived Hurricane Sandy, although some of us were without power for a week! Back to school meant back to a Veterans Day program without much practice. In spite of this, our classes were amazingly wonderful and presented our guest veterans and school community with a program full of respect and honor. We were so proud of them.

We said so long to the last of our butterflies in mid October! We released over a dozen butterflies at school and I released another 15 at home! This was a record year for me and I was pleased to be able to tag the last dozen or so.

Sixth graders are very busy these days working in the classroom and serving as peer advisors for younger students and child caregivers for teacher committees.

Mason has arrived and is growing quickly! He arrived on October 4th at 7 pounds 11 ounces, 19 inches long. He is the spitting image of his father when he was born 32 years ago! Mason is beginning to stay awake more now and loves to lay on his playmat staring up at the toys. He has given his Nana a few smiles and has received a few hundred kisses from her!

Jack was outstanding in "Lord of the Flies" and has moved on to his next pursuit, the high school play. Charlotte is a big first grader now and enjoying every minute of school, especially science class. She learned to swim in September and has found great joy in swimming underwater. She will certainly be ready for the beach next summer! Fiona is now two and has quite a golf swing going. Hmmm... the next great female golfer??!! She just loves being outside and goes from golf to soccer to basketball to riding her new tricycle. When she is at Nana's house she loves to go to the frog pond and talk to them! She also takes long, dried up flower stalks and tries to touch the frogs with them. Needless to say, I am blessed with four energetic, loving grandchildren! I am looking forward to the holidays with them!

Mrs. Buckley

First Day!

Wow! What a great day we had today - lots of "housekeeping," laughter and, sometimes, confusion! Expectations, as well as a preview of this year's field trips were discussed at our meeting of both classes. We will continue to work together to build a community of learners who value hard work, curiosity, and each other.

September 10th

Wow! Our butterfly haven has been a flurry of activity! Caterpillars are either chomping away at the milkweed or finding a safe place to begin their magical metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. While we all waited patiently for the first sign of the start of a chrysalis, the change began and was complete while the children were at specials one day! Mr. Barile, however, happened to be in the sixth grade at the time and captured part of the event on his phone. We were all able to view the video on our Bright Link when students returned to the classroom! We also bid farewell one afternoon as we released a butterfly - a male. It is an exciting attraction for the children to have our own butterfly "nursery" to watch the progress of our monarchs!

Mrs. Buckley

August 2012 Summer is almost over and September is sneaking up on us! Even though this has been a busy summer, filled with family outings and lazy days on my deck, I am looking forward to coming back to school. Why? I'm ready to share my year with all of the students I met in June on step-up day!

What a summer it has been and what stories I will have to share with all of you! Spending precious time with my grandchildren at Bethany Beach, Delaware, was only the start of my summer. This year we also went to see the wild horses at Assateague Island. Three young horses put on quite a show for us as we drove through the park! At home in Massachusetts, Charlotte spent several weeks at day camp, learning to swim and having fun with friends. She also had the cutest dance recital in ballet and tap. Jack spent most of the summer playing Lumiere in a Barrington Stage Company production of "Beauty and the Beast." He also had a couple of casting calls in New York City for student produced films and has been cast as one of the twins in "Lord of the Flies" in October. This production is also with BSC! Fiona Catherine, who will be two in October, has visited zoos, parks, farms, and playgrounds this summer. The highlight of those trips had to be meeting Elmo and Cookie at Sesame Place in Pennsylvania. Arriving in October will be our fourth grandchild! Due on October 4th, Mason Harrison Buckley will say hello to the rest of our family! We are all looking forward to that special day!

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">But wait...there's more: tending a vegetable garden that does not get enough sun, taking walks with my Chelsea (cutest pug in the world), kayaking lakes and estuaries, watching my frog eggs develop into tadpoles and new frogs in my water garden, making sugar syrup every day for the hummingbirds who made themselves at home in my yard, listening to all my noisy baby birds (bluebirds, wrens, orioles, finches) in every birdhouse in my garden, quietly taking pictures of deer with fawns as they made their way through our woods and our yard, and touring Newport once again on a segway!! This year's tour was along the coast! The latest of my summer adventures has been tending to my monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars. So far I have watched 10 caterpillars become crysalides. I will be bringing any that have not emerged from their crysalides as butterflies into class for all of us to enjoy! Oh, the stories I have to share!

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Hopefully, you will start to think about your summer stories to share with the class! Your new writer's notebook is an "empty ditch" at the moment, waiting to be filled with stories and memories about you. We'll be decorating our notebooks the first few days of school so you can start collecting photos, words, phrases, and graphics from magazines at home. I also have magazines at school that we will use for the notebook covers. I can't wait to learn all about you and share stories about me!

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Mrs. Buckley :)