April 28, 2022

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! It was so nice to have a couple of beautiful days this week. It was wonderful to be outside on Tuesday doing yard work and Wednesday was even better. I sat outside and finished a book after work. The motorcycles are out and about for sure. My brain just needed to enjoy the sun! I hope to have more of these days but it is not looking good. UGH! I hope the farmers need this rain.

Language Arts

This week we are reading the story Ever-Living Tree. It is about the California Coast Redwoods. We also know them as Sequoia Trees. This is a non-fiction piece about he life of a Coastal Redwood. It compares the life of the tree to things that are happening all over the world. We talked about Alexander the Great, The building of the Great Wall of China, and Augustus Ceaser. It also talks about the end of a trees life is when it falls. Which can have many reasons why it falls. These trees can survive many things like storms and fire. In grammar we talked mainly about ending punctuation, capitalization and punctuation in quotations, and then we ended with special punctuation: ellipses and dashes. They will not be tested over these two items. The vocabulary strategy this week was over Prefixes pre-, inter-, and ex- Their spelling post te st will be tomorrow along with their end of the week test.

Book Report **Date change

The last book report is to be due on Monday, May 9th, but I am changing that due date to Monday, May 16th. That week we will have ended the stories in the book and will have time to share reports. So instead of having the reports sit around for the week, they can actually have an extra week to complete them. It is a diorama or book box. I have gone over the directions with them. They should all be finishing up their books to begin work on the box.

Math

This week we have spent the week working on Partial quotient. Some are really getting it and I have a few that rare really struggling. This is not the math that you and I learned but it is good stuff. I think it gives them a good idea of what they are doing when they learn the standard algorithm next year. We will finish up this topic and move into learning what multiples and factors are. Then we will dig into fractions. This next test over division will be their last math test for the year. The rest of the stuff I plan to teach but not test over.

Social Studies

We are working quickly through this chapter. When we finish this chapter it will also be our last test in this subject. Then I will pick and choose lessons in the areas of the Southwest and West to cover in the book. We will also still work on Map tests of those areas. The end is very near!

Elk's Track Meet

Last week we sent a paper home for the students to sign up to participate in the Elk's Track Meet. This is voluntary no one has to do it but if you are wondering is track is or you, I highly recommend trying it. I remember doing it as a kid and it was super fun. We have not done it for a while. I have had a couple kids bring the forms back. If you child is interested let's get them signed up. Please return them ASAP.

Lap-a-Thon

Our Annual lap-a-thon is on May 5th. The forms for donations came home last week they were printed on bright orange paper. They would have been hard to miss. Please be working on those donations and get ready for running laps!

Flowers

In the St. Malachy blog that Mrs. Simmons puts out, she requested each student to bring in $1.00 to help purchase flowers for the school grounds. I only had a few people donate. If you could we would love it if you could help donate. It just makes everything look more beautiful.

I will be gone tomorrow afternoon. I am taking half a personal day. I am headed to Des Moines to spend the afternoon and night with my bestie! I hope the sun is shining but I doubt it will be. That's okay I will still enjoy the time. I hope all of you have a great weekend. Spring sports are kicking in letting us know summer is getting close. Tomorrow is NOT a spirit day.

God Bess,

Mrs. Sickels