December 4, 2025

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! What a crazy week for me! I was to fly back from AZ Saturday night. As a matter of fact my flight was to arrive at 9:33 just a couple minutes after that Delta flight that slid off the runway. I am happy they were safe and cancelled the flight but we were boarding. It had been snowing in Des Moines for 2 days. They should have known it was going to cancel. We jumped immediately on finding a new flight. Tuesday was the earliest affordable flight. Anything on Sunday was full and Monday had one option for over $1,000. The Sunday flights ended up cancelled also! There were two of them so they had 400 more people looking for flights.

I am was so happy to get home and still be able to see the snow and scrape 8 inches of it off the car. The best part was the students. I greeted them all with hugs that morning and they seemed very excited to see me. It is taking me a bit to get back into the school routine. The kids have had to remind me of a few things but even this makes me smile.

Language Arts

We started a new story today. It is the 2nd story in Module 3. It is called Hurricanes: Forces of Nature. It is definitely a non fiction piece. It is also not very long. We only just read this story together just one time and move on to the 2nd story, called "Catch Me If You Can". Thius story is a drama (play). Grammar this week will be over present progressive, past progressive, and future progressive tenses. Our spelling list is over vowel sounds /ou/ and /o/. Most of them did pretty well on the pretest. The spelling post test and end of story test will take place on Tuesday, December 16th. We have a lot of changes next week to schedules and due to this week having 2 stories is why it is so far away.

Today was "Double Minutes Day" for Read-a-thon. I gave them a couple of opportunities to read today. Not everyone of them got all the time to read because of band lessons and LEAP but they should have some minutes to double. If they read any at home today they may also double that. Remember that only counts on the Read-a-thon. On the book it calendar they cannot double.

Math

We are working on a review for Math. They have worked on the 4 page review all week. Today we started checking it. I am spending two days checking it with them so they did not have a math and social studies test on Friday. We will finish checking the math review tomorrow and they will have the weekend to study for their math test on Monday. I told them we are sitting quite well in Math. Last year this test was not until in January. The week of Christmas I will take a break and do some Christmas fun math. At least that is what I call it. We will begin the next chapter up until then. I will not teach too many lessons out of it because our break is so long this year. WE will forget what we learned in that amount of time.

Social Studies

We have been working on a study guide this week. We checked it today and they will have a test over Chapter 5 tomorrow. We will move on to the Southeast Region after this test.

Spirit Day

Tomorrow December 5th is a Spirit Day. The students can pay $1.00 to wear sweats. It is a perfect day to do that, if you did not pay the fee for sweats the whole month, this is for you!

Nursing Homes

Don't forget we are also collecting items for people in the nursing homes. This year we are looking for shower gel or body wash, store bought cookies (Oreos, chips ahoy, ect) and soft candies. Last day for items is December 12th, so we can get the bags put together and delivered by Christmas.

Holy Day

We have a Holy Day of Obligation on Monday, December 8th. The kids will need to come in Mass clothing on Monday. We will do a full Wednesday schedule that day and will have PE on Wednesday. Wednesday will also still be an early out day!

Band

The Holy day schedule does change the band schedule. Band class next week will be on Wednesday and Thursday. If your child has a scheduled lesson on Mondays they need their instrument on Wednesday. Only for lessons. Group band will watch the program. Thursday will be normal and everyone will need to bring their band instrument that day.

The Christmas program was awesome last night. The kids all looked fantastic and did a great job! It is also a great night to show off what our kids can do.

This is such a busy time of year. Is your shopping done? I did a lot of mine on Cyber Monday. I have had boxes arriving daily. Remember this weekend is Merry Marketplace. I will be working at the bookstore. Come see me there! I hope you are all finding the joy in the season so far.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels