August 28, 2025

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! This is our first official blog. Remember they will come out every Thursday! I will send them via an email and place it on the Facebook page. It will have all the information about our classroom. It will have what we are doing and what might be coming up. Please be sure to read it each week so you are aware of what is going on.

Language Arts

This week they read the story Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. I really enjoy this author but not so sure I enjoy this selection. We talked about the genre. We will talk about Context Clues and how they help you to know words you are unfamiliar with. For grammar we will review the subject and predicate of a sentence. I feel like I will cover a ton of stuff with them. We will spend 7-8 days on this story. We will take a spelling post test either September 9 or 10. I will keep you posted. The way spelling works is this: We will take a pretest on day one of a story. If your child misses more than half the words, I automatically shorten the list for those students. This the way it works 4th and 5th grades. Some lists tend to be harder than others so maybe your child gets a short list one week and a not the next. We covered 10 vocabulary words today. They were big words and hard! Today they defined the words in their Language Arts notebooks. There are a lot of hard words. This week the story is like 20 pages long. The next one is not as long. This is why it will take us a while to cover this story. I also cover it 3 times in 3 different ways. The first time we read it, I read it to them and ask comprehension questions, the 2nd time they will read in partners or small groups and they will work together filling out a graphic organizer over a specific skill, and the last time we read as a whole class, each student having the opportunity to read out loud. This is to ensure they understand the story and grasp the skills.

Math

We started our chapter this week by doing the "What we know" page. We checked that together today. We will focus on the place value chart up through the millions. We will talk about what a period is in math and focus on each period having a ones, tens and hundreds place. We will also begin to focus on expanded form and number names, which is writing the number in word form. I introduced them to Holy Cards today which is our way of working on Math basic facts. We begin with just Addition and subtraction.

Social Studies

We have been reading about the Regions of the United States this week. We focused on land forms. We started lesson 1 today. After lesson one we skip on to chapter 2. Again I skip around in the first 3 chapters to only cover what I feel is essential for the students based on our standards.

Assignment Books

I am not sure when the assignment books that were ordered will be here. We are just patiently waiting. We will all work together on using it when they all have them.

Welcome Back Picnic

Thank you to all who were present at the picnic last night. I was very late. Ms. Surma and I had to run to Des Moines after school to pick up our school materials from Biztown, it was the only time after school to get them. We were here by 6:35. I hope you all had a nice time.

Monday, September 1, 2025

This is Labor Day so NO SCHOOL!!! HOORAY!

Well, first week is almost complete. Wow! I am tired, must be me showing my age. I have a birthday tomorrow and hit double nickels. The big 55! I think I am definitely slowing down. I do feel like we have had a great week.

I hope all of you have a great long weekend. It's Labor Day Weekend so no school on Monday. I am spending the weekend with my family. It's always a Hudson Cousin's weekend. We picnic, some camp and we ride ATV's all weekend. Enjoying each other's company is the best part. I hope you have a safe weekend whatever you have planned.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels