Community Helpers!

Welcome back. I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing week away from school. I enjoyed seeing and meeting so many families at conferences last Monday and Tuesday. Today was an exciting day in kindergarten. We kicked off our new PYP theme unit on Communities with a COMMUNITY HELPER Day. We had six members of our community come and speak with our students about how they help the people of South Saint Paul. All kindergarten students rotated as a class and heard about: a garbage collector, a policeman(woman), firefighter, city engineer, mayor and a parks and recreation representative. Check out what we saw:

We loved to watch the garbage man lift the trash bin off the truck with his special levers. We learned that this garbage truck does not collect trash from dumpsters. It is used for big construction projects like new roofs, and driveways.


We had so much fun learning about what it is like in the police world. We all got to sit in the front and back of the squad car. We compared and contrasted the cars we ride in compared to a police car. We learned that the back seats of a police car are hard so that people can't hide anything in the seats. We learned that police work hard to keep us safe in our communities. Our special helper Maddy even got to turn on the lights and the siren!



We were so excited to hear about what it is like to be a firefighter. We learned that South Saint Paul has two fire trucks. The firefighters have to live at the station for one third of the year. They are like a family because they spend so much time together. They use a ladder, a hose and an ax as their tools. As we were listening to the firefighters speak, we heard TWO firetruck sirens in the distance!



We really enjoyed learning about snow plow engineers. We learned that they cover the big plows in special black paper so the snow doesn't stick. They dump rock salt on the road to help melt the ice. They get up at 2 in the morning to make sure all of the roads are clear for emergency vehicles, and in time for us to drive to work and school. In the fall, they help blow leaves away from the streets. In the spring, they use street sweepers to get rid of dirt and salt.


This is Beth Baumann, the mayor of South Saint Paul. She helps make rules and laws for our city. We practiced "motioning" for new laws at school. We passed lots of new laws for our school that help keep students safe and help them learn. Mayor B. uses a gavel when a new law is passed. We learned new words for yes and no. If we agree to a law we say YAY. If we do not agree to a law we say NAY.

Our teacher was having such a great time, she forgot to take pictures of our guest from the Parks and Recreation Department. We learned how important it is to take care of our parks by keeping our dogs on a leash and by picking up after them. We learned that South Saint Paul has many parks to play football and disc golf.


I am sure that the students will have much more to tell you. The pictures will probably jog their memories:-)