December 14, 2023

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday ! Now, I am going to say this week has gone quickly. I feel like I literally just did a blog and sent it. This week has definitely zoomed by. Now, next week will most likely be a different story. It will be the slowest of the year. I plan to keep them busy all week with work but Friday will be a fun day. Please see below for what we will be doing.

Language Arts

We have begun a new story. I plan on working on this story until next Tuesday. It looks like, tentatively, the spelling post test will be next Tuesday or Wednesday. I keep having to push things back because we are not accomplishing everything I have planned in one day. It is okay, it is important that we cover this story well. This story is a narrative nonfiction story called St. Augustine. It is about St. Augustine, Florida. We talked about this city in social studies in 3rd grade so I was able to pull up some prior knowledge and remind them of what we have already learned. This is a very "meaty" story, meaning it is full of facts and information regarding this city. I know they understand now how historical this city is and how Mrs. Sickels wants to visit it one day to see all its history.

This story is full of lots of visuals. We call these text and graphic features. The class read the story in partners today and picked out the text and graphic features in the selection. We have been working on possessive nouns in grammar and adding -ed and -ing to words for spelling and decoding. This is a great spelling lesson. Learning when and how we spell certain words. We will also do a graphic organizer on Author's Purpose together when we read it for the 3rd time next week. All of these things are necessary to help us learn how to pick these things out in a story.

Math

I feel like we have not done much math this week. We finished up learnig about partial products but now have moved on to learning Area Box which also uses partial products. Some wondered why we do it. We do this so they have a visual to go along with their math. It is just another strategy to help them understand multiplication. They just had 4 problems to do as homework today. Tomorrow we will look at what they did and go from there. If they are doing okay we will go on to the word problems if not we will work more on the strategy and have other homework from a past worksheet I can dig up.

Social Studies

We finished up chapter 5 this week. They corrected their tests today. I will send them home to be signed tomorrow. We have moved on into chapter 6. This will begin our study for the Southeast Region. They will now begin to learn about 12 new states. They were kind of exctied to move on to a new set of states. They love to sing the song everyday to begin our day. They listed the states in their notebook. We will introduce the chapter tomorrow and they will have a vocabulary preview to do for homework with time in class to work on it.

Friday, December 22nd

This day is full of fun things. First please remember to send a sack lunch with your child. Milk will be provided, so no drink is necessary. The kids will be eating lunch in the gym with their Advent Angels. When they are finished eating we will have our annual sing along. We hope to get this started at about 12:30. Please feel free to come and sing along with us. This is my favorite activity that we have. They are so excited they sing out so loud! During the lunch some angels like to get theri Angel partner a Gift. This is NOT a requirement. No one is expected to bring a gift, but if you choose to we ask you do not spend more than $5. Also it has to be something that the little ones can handle taking home by themselves.

In the classroom on this day we will have a Christmas Party in the morning. I plan to finish up any loose ends with work first thing. After that we will just enjoy each other's company by playing board games. If anyone has a board game at home that I do not have here, they may bring it. Keep in mind not all games may get played. We will spend about 90 minutes playing games. During this time we will also have a treat and a drink. I guess I feel it is our way of spending time with our classroom family before we break for Christmas.

Dress- Up days

Monday, December 18 Grinch Day/Green Day (Wear green or anything Grinch)

Tuesday, December 19 Pajama Day/slippers/robe

Wed. December 20 Dress-Up Day due to Mass

Thursday December 21 Dress up as your favorite Christmas Carol

Friday, December 22 Ugly Sweater/ Favorite Christmas Shirt Day

Spirit Day

Tomorrow Friday the 15th is Spirit Day! Pay $1.00 to wear sweat pants! I am using a pass to wear sweats tomorrow. Who will join me? Let's raise some money!

I am really happy with the kids behavior this week. Now some got a little forgetful about doing their homework and we have had some sick kids too. Overall they have been very good. I know next week will change a little but I hope knowing that we are going to have a fun day on Friday will help. I may use it to help me earlier in the week.

I have a family Christmas this weekend. I have a sister-in-law coming from Arizona so I am excited. It is always a fun weekend. My kids will be down to spend the weekend with me also. It will be short one for sure. I hope you all enjoy the weekend. It looks like snow is not in the cards this year. That makes me super sad. Iowa is supposed to have snow at Christmas.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels