February 19, 2026

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! Here we are again. The weather is much different today then the last time I was writing this. I knew the cold and snow would make its return. It was just too early to be warm and stay that way. I had a few grumpy ones today because they had to wear their winter coats. I will be curious to see how they are tomorrow when they have to bring their boots. It is hard to believe yesterday I had no coat on and today I am freezing.

Language Arts

We are reading a story called St. Augustine. It is about the first permanent European settlement in the United States. We talked about it in Social Studies this chapter AND now in Language arts. They will have learned a lot about it. The grammar this week is on singular and Plural possessive nouns. This is showing ownership by using an apostrophe. The spelling list is on words ending in -ed and -ing. We went over some spelling rules to help them. They are taught to look at the root/base word of the word then go from there when adding the endings. The post test will be next Tuesday. You will find results from the last End of story test in today's folder. The scores were not very good. This module always tends to have lower scores because they are stories that do not highly interest the kids.

Book Reports

Just to remind you the book reports are due next Friday, February 27th. We will work them on that day and begin presenting them the following week.

Math

We are working are way through our division chapter. We are working on estimating quotients right now. That is what we will work on all this week. Next week we will move onto learning partial quotient. That is the only strategy I will teach them this year. They will learn the standard algorithm next year in 5th grade. We will hopefully be moving into fractions much sooner this year than I normally do.

Social Studies

We are working on finishing up Chapter 7. Their test will be tomorrow. We will move right into the Midwest next week. Again they are looking forward to this because it is where we live. They may come home with new vacation ideas after we talk about the things the Midwest has to offer and cool things to see.

Spirit Day

Tomorrow is a Spirit Day! They can pay $1.00 to wear sweat pants. What a perfect day to wear sweatpants. I sure wish I could in honor of snow.

Conferences

The conference sign up has gone out. In the folder you will find directions on how to sign yourself up. I will try to watch and if you get signed up for two by accident I will help to get rid of the one we don't need.

Well, enjoy whatever weather we get. Of course I am okay with a little snow. I had not been paying attention to any reports. I still thought this morning we were to get a trace up to 1 inch and I couldn't understand the necessity of a Winter Weather Advisory. My co-workers filled me in this morning and I was happy to do a snow dance in the hallway. Some saw it some missed it. (HAHAHA) Have a great weekend. I plan to spend Saturday in Des Moines with my bestie. We are going to shop, enjoy dinner and go to Wuthering Heights. Perfect day and much needed.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels