Week of Jan. 6th-9th

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Hope that you enjoy your time with family and friends over the holiday season!  It is so hard to believe that half of the school year has already passed us by.  As a teacher, this is when I always start to panic as I realize that I only have about 5 more months with these students to help prepare them for their next level of education!  We still need to learn all of our cursive letters, the important topics of telling time and counting money, work on a variety of writing formats, and most importantly continue to develop that very valuable love of reading!  Keep reading everyone……even over Christmas break!

Spelling Words for the first week of January:

try         kind          hand         picture         again          fast           post          last          blast         cast          oral          data           record           science

Challenge:  magnify      contrast

Reminder:  School resumes for students on Tuesday, January 6th!

Week of December 15th-19th

Curriculum

Although this week’s curriculum which will be covered is quite sparse, we will still find time to explore and practice many of the recent skills newly acquired.  This includes further instruction and practice with lower case cursive letters.  During our Literacy Block we will read several festive Christmas stories and even look at the classic Charles Dickens’ story “The Christmas Carol”.  Hopefully this will help get us all in the Christmas spirit!  Our math time will allow us to look at some 3-digit addition problems.  Hopefully we will also begin our exploration of the water cycle which we ran out of time for this last week!

Because of all of the distractions and extra activities this week, there will be no spelling test this week!  We will, however, be practicing some Christmas/ Holiday words during our “Word Work” time in class.

Reminders/Announcements

The elementary Christmas program is tonight!  We always look forward to this beautiful evening filled with Christmas spirit.  Students are asked to be there at around 6:15 with the show beginning at 6:30.

There will be a all-school field trip to Mason City on the morning of Wednesday, December 17th.  We will be leaving right away in the morning and will return in time for lunch back at school.

There is a 2:00 dismissal on both Thursday and Friday of next week as well.

Hope that everyone has a blessed and wonderful Christmas and holiday season!  

Week of December 8th-12th

Curriculum

As we get closer to our Christmas break, it seems like we have less and less time to focus on our curriculum and school work!  Oh well, Christmas is such a joyous time that we might as well give in and start celebrating.  As we begin our “Seven Continent Adventure” we will start with our home continent-North America and spend some time learning about the culture and land found in our neighboring country of Mexico.  Since we are quickly approaching the holidays, we will also discuss how they celebrate Christmas and other holidays in this fascinating Latin American country!  During our Math time we will be focusing on counting up to 1,000 and the corresponding place values used in these larger numbers.  We will also be talking about writing numbers in standard form, expanded form, and number words.  Reading will allow us to continue to explore the topic of bridges and the various styles that are found around the world.  This will lead into a discussion of “Building Bridges” among people as we enjoy several books that explore those topics!  Science will allow us to begin our exploration of the water cycle, which you can see by looking at the spelling words given below!

Spelling Words:    ask            went         men         read         need         short       core        sport       report      port       escort           solid        liquid         gas

Challenge:      question        cycle

Reminder

The elementary Christmas program will be Friday, December 12th in the high school gym.  It begins at 6:30 but students are asked to be there around 6:15 and will meet with their teachers in the cafeteria!  This is always such a fun time of year!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week!