Oct. 16

Fall has certainly arrived! Some days I think Winter has arrived - WAY TOO EARLY! :-)

This week we heard the story of Christopher Columbus and did the art project of a ship to represent the three ships with Columbus. We also had Theme Skills tests for Theme 1 in Reading. We are currently working on rough drafts for our stories. They use storyboards to plan their stories, and then we use them to write the story. It's new to my class and is a bit difficult, but it'll get better as they get used to it. We worked on sentences that are statements. I usually try to "trick" the kids by giving them a trick sentence like throw in an incomplete sentence or a question, and they are so smart they catch the trick. Hooray! In Science we had pictures of animals and found many ways to sort them- by number of legs, fur, feathers, habitat, etc. They did an excellent job of sorting. In Math, we have begun place-value and are using our base-ten blocks. Some are finding the place-value confusing so we'll keep working on that, too.

We have completed our second lesson for our Reconciliation preparation. The kids should have brought the sheets home as there is a note to parents on the last page of the pamphlets. Please look through these. We are also working on learning about the Mysteries of the Rosary. The booklets do not include the Luminous Mysteries, but they are on the other sheets the kids have on the rosary.


Next week we will begin Theme 2 in Reading. The theme is Nature Walk. We will be practicing comparing and contrasting. We'll be working on words with Vowel-Consonant-Final E long sounds of o,u, and e as well as the two sounds for "g". In English we'll do more practice with statements and questions. For Science, it's learning about reptiles, amphibians, and fish. We'll finish up the chapter in Math, and then the next chapter we'll start with ordinal numbers and comparing numbers with greater, less than, and equal to.

We will be doing games in our rooms for grades K-5 for our Honors/Halloween party on October 30. We plan to have the kids move from room to room with the aid of our Junior High students. We are asking for donations of prizes for these games. If you can help with the prizes, please sent them in to me. THANKS!

Have a great weekend!