October 9, 2025

Dear Parents,

Happy Thursday! Here we are again. It just seems so quick between blogs. The week seems long yet when I am typing I feel like I just did this. It has been a good week. Our Mass was amazing. They did an outstanding job! I was very proud of all of them. Thank you to all who came to support them. We do not have another one until January. There will be an all school mass in there and maybe your child will be given a job for that. I appreciate Ellee playing the piano for us. If you need the sign up link to play an instrument at Mass let me know and I will send it to you.

Language Arts

This week we have been busy in Language arts. We have taken a Module test which is similar to a Unit test. I assigned their first book report, and we partnered up to create some fun Halloween stories. The tests are complete, I have checked all of them. You will find the results in this week's folder. This test seems to be a little harder than the weekly ones which is to be expected. We started Module 2 on Tuesday. The story is called The Science Behind Sight. It is an informational text talking about the eye. How it works, what it is made up of and how animal's eyes work also. It also talks about needing glasses and why. Grammar will focus on complete sentences or sentence fragments. Spelling and decoding is covering Short o and long o. We will also cover these strategies: Text and Graphic Features, central ideas (main idea), text structure, content-area words, and summarize. This is a lot! All strategies are in their composition books which they may use when taking a test.

Book Reports: They will be creating a cereal box project. So save your next empty cereal box for them. Once they have found a book they like they have to bring it to me so I can okay it and write it down. I like to keep track of what they are reading. They need to read the book in its entirety first. Then they will come to me, and I will give them some pieces they need to complete the project. They need to be creative about their front and back of the box. I gave them some suggestions on games to put on the back. You can find mazes to print out or word searches that will generate your very own word search. They have about 6 weeks to complete this report.

Fast Scores - You will find your student's testing scores in their take home folders today.

Math

This Topic is all review for students. It is about addition and subtraction. They worked on adding numbers up to the 100's. The next lesson gave them even bigger numbers into the hundred thousands. Then we moved into subtraction where I have to slow down a bit because I have to refresh their memory on how to regroup when the subtraction can not happen. That took them a little bit to remember. We have had to slow down and I have talked to them about slowing down due to the amount of regrouping they will be doing We started subtraction with numbers in the 100's. We moved into bigger numbers. Now we are working on bigger numbers with more regrouping or numbers that have lots of zeroes in them to cause a lot of regrouping. Again I have really preached for them to slow down. They have work in their text book today and tomorrow they will have work on a worksheet. I am requiring them to check their work on an extra piece of paper to help them see if their answer is correct. If it is not they need to look at their work and find mistakes or ask for help finding their mistakes

Fast Scores - You will find your student's testing scores in their take home folders today.

Social Studies

We took a test on Tuesday. They corrected them today. I had one perfect test. I will send them home tomorrow for signatures from the parents. I feel like over all the students did very well. We will start the next chapter tomorrow which is over the Northeast Region. They will list the 11 states that make up that region in their notebooks. They will be expected to label a map of the Northeast with the states by the end of the chapter. I will give them maps next week to make an answer key and some blank ones to use for practice testing. I will let them know when the first test will be. It is important that they learn each region because at the end of 4th grade they will need to be able to do all 50!

Conferences

The conference link will be sent out to all of you on Monday. You will find it on JMC. Please be sure to go on and fill out a time that works best for you. I will be here those hours no matter what so get signed up. I can't wait to meet with all of you and talk about what is going on with your student.

Noisy Change Collection

The 3rd grade will be having a noisy change collection at their Mass on October 15th. The money is going towards travel expenses, food and medical expenses to some of our staff that are experiencing health issues either themselves or an immediate family member.

Fire Prevention Posters

The students started to work on Fire Prevention Posters last week. They continued to work on them this week. For Art tomorrow we will be going outside to create a piece of sidewalk for someone they want to pray for. We do this in celebration of the month of the Rosary. Each child will get a chunk of sidewalk to call their own and decorate with their petition or intention.

I hope you are all looking forward to the weekend. I look forward to the temps. I will be spending time with my mom and family in Iowa City on Saturday. Then I hope to spend the rest of the weekend lounging and reading. My favorite things to do.

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels