December 2, 2021

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! Wow! What a short week for me. Professional Development on Monday, Behavior class on Tuesday, and finally back today! I was very happy to be back with my kiddos. I missed them over break. Now, we have 3 weeks to be together and accomplish some academics and some fun!! This is the time of year that goes super fast. I told you at conference time the end of the year comes quickly. Now is it on super speed. It is the most exciting time of year for students and one of the hardest for teachers to keep kids focused and hard at work. I will admit it is still my favorite time of year. I am playing Christmas music whenever I can now.

Language Arts

This week is Unit 2 test week. We completed it today. I try to spread it out over 3 days so it is not so overwhelming. We shared all cereal box reports. The 1st graders came in last Tuesday and voted on their favorite boxes. Indie's box won. Karsi was 2nd and Ayari was 3rd. Good job ladies! I did put their pictures on our Facebook page for all to see. Next week we will back in the book reading our weekly stories and taking our weekly spelling tests. I am happy about this because they are in their normal routine and they know to expect homework. The next unit is full of non fiction stories. Some will be of interest and others will be okay to hear the first time but they may get bored with it. We will work our way through as best we can.

Math

We have begun the multiplication chapter. We are 3 lessons in. This week we have been working on the partial product strategy. This is not the strategy that you and I learned but it is a great strategy. Now, this is not "new" math. I have been teaching this strategy 22 of my 24 years of teaching. This is the way I wish I had been taught to do it. I totally understand exactly what I am doing and why. We will focus on this strategy for the rest of the week. I love to teach it. We had a fun class the last couple days. Some students even yelled, "This is fun!" That was from a student who doesn't get very excited about anything. It made me smile. My goal was to have topic 3 complete before break but I realized it might be a little unrealistic. I want to give it the attention it needs to be successful and we have so many fun things to do. So I am going to do my best to get it mostly done but not expect it to all be done. I feel like that is a compromise with myself.

Social Studies

I am really working with them on using their books to find answers and write the sentences directly from the book onto their paper so they are answering the question in full. Some are getting and some just want to be done quickly and give a short answer that does not fulfill the question. The students received a paper back today they have to correct because of this exact thing. I only had 6 students use their books and write out the answers. They were even working in partners. This skill is important for high school and beyond so I am really working hard on it. We will be finishing up this chapter, testing and moving on to the next chapter before Christmas break. Well, again that is my goal. I am pretty confident on this one. We also have one more Map test to take to be sure everyone is learning where those states are on a map. Please keep working on this skill at home.

Coin Wars

Tomorrow is the last day the students can bring money to put in the coin wars containers. They will be picking them up. They started out with a BANG by putting big bills in there and not much change has come in this week. I know we just had noisy can collection this week also, so that makes for a lot of giving.

Spirit Day

Tomorrow is a Spirit Day. The students may pay $1.00 to wear sweat pants.

I hope all your Christmas shopping is going well. This week I have Amazon orders arriving daily. The Echo dot goes off when it is delivered. The kids go, "she got an order delivered." It is nice I get alerted so I can have my neighbor get them off my porch.

I am very impressed by the number of families that have signed up to help our "Nursing home residents" with gifts. This is such a wonderful idea spearheaded by Leisha Clark. What a thoughtful thing to do and have the kids be a part of. I hope they all smile at Christmas knowing they made someone else smile. I will also talk to them about praying for them this month.

Our Advent Wreath is out and we are lighting it everyday during prayer. Just a nice extra addition to prayer. I love it because the candles count down the weeks. We also have been gifted an advent calendar by Barb the RE educator. So after prayer I read what it says for the day. They were excited to start that today.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels