Friday, March 22, 2013

Newsletter from 3-22-13


Third and Fourth Grade News
From the Week of March 22, 2013

Dear Parents,
We have had another wonderful week!  It is hard to believe with all of this snow on the ground, that spring has begun, and we are headfirst into the 4th quarter of school!  This year has sped by…goodness!  Report cards came home this Wednesday.  I am pleased with your child’s progress and hard work!  Please continue to uplift them in words of praise and with prayer, as we diligently finish out this school year!  We have so many things yet to accomplish… J 
Please continue to pray for Mr. Burns. As I noted earlier this week, he was injured in a motorcycle accident on Friday.  He has sustained a broken clavicle, rib and a punctured lung.  He is at home and is healing.  We are so thankful that his injuries were not more severe.  Please keep Kent and his family in your prayers as he recovers.  Because of this, the Spring Pageant (April 13 & 14) has been postponed to the fall.
The children have already begun working on their next book reports!  Third graders will be reading a biography and will have a special project to go with that.  I will introduce this next week.  Fourth graders are reading fantasy books and making windsocks.  I have extended the due date on this one until after Easter—April 2nd (instead of March 28th).  They will then be reading biographies for April and will do the same project as the third graders! 
Easter Break is coming next week! Students will be dismissed at 1:00 on Thursday, March 28 to begin our Easter Break.  We will have specials classes in the morning this day, to accommodate our homeschoolers.  In honor of Easter, students will not report back to class until Tuesday, April 2. 
Our annual Trivia Night fund raiser is Friday, April 19.  It is a fun night, including a team trivia competition and silent auction.  We encourage you to gather your team of 8 friends and join us for the fun.  Don’t have a team?  Don’t worry!  Teams of individuals can be formed that evening.  The theme is “Dancing Through the Decades”.  Each class is creating a one-of-a-kind item for the live auction.  Ticket sales begin April 2.  We are accepting new items for the silent auction.  We welcome individual and/or business donations of goods or services.  If you would like to help, contact Amanda Pascoe.  amandap@timothylutheran.com
Please remind your child to bring in change for Children’s Christian Concern Society each Wednesday in March.   Each $25.00 we raise will sponsor a student for a month.  This money shares the message of Jesus and educates this child.  Thank you for helping us to support this organization.  The kids are SO excited!  (So far, our class is the front runner in this!!!)
Next year’s enrollment time is here!  Enrolling soon helps us with our planning for the next school year.  We do expect some of our classes to be full next year, especially in the lower grades.  The sooner your papers are in, the sooner your position is set.  We also have some great news regarding this!  Because enrollment is up next year, we have enough students to split first and second grades!  It has always been Timothy’s intent to have separate grade classrooms, and now we enough numbers to split those two grades.  Praise the Lord!  If you have any questions regarding this, please contact Mr. Kuerschner.  Thank you! 
There has been an adjustment to the school calendar.  Because of our recent snow days, we are extending our school year through Friday, May 24th.  We will have a closing chapel and early release at 1 p.m. that day.

Below, I have highlighted some of what we have done this week:

Religion: This week in Religion, we talked about the job of a pastor, and what he does for us and our congregation, as well as for the community!  We have such amazing pastors here at Timothy.  We are so blessed.  We also talked a lot about the life of David, and we studied his Psalms.  Today, we each wrote our psalm to God, poured out our hearts to Him, as David did, and then made it look like one of the old scrolls stored in the temple back in Bible times.  These will be coming home today for you to enjoy!  We had fun writing them!  Thank you again for your amazing faith-filled kiddos! 

Memory Next Week:
March 26-- workers, or animals, or turn them against him, but urge them to stay and do their duty. We will have a short matching test about the commandments. Please make sure your child can identify the commandments.  We will be working on this in class as well.   

Science: This week we learned about moon and what size it is compared to the earth.  The children wrote down their beliefs and prior-knowledge about the moon.  We ruled out some of these misconceptions, and began learning about the moon!   The students are very excited to learn about these things and to soon build our Space Stations!

School of Economics: Students found out this week what jobs they will have at the School of Economics.  We then met in teams and decided what supplies to buy for our shops, and how much money we will have to buy these supplies.  We began creating our shop signs too…and are learning great communication skis, as well as how to work with all kinds of different people.  This is such a character-building time!  What a great experience for these kids…!  Next week, students will have preparation sessions to get the pricing for their items solidified and think about ways to advertise their products.  Please remember that we visit the School of Economics on April 17th.  A SignUpGenius link has been email to you with further details and parent-helper information.  We still have some open spots left for parent helpers!  If you are missing the email about School of Economics, check out this link: www.signupgenius.com/go/4090E49AAA722A57-school

Math: Third graders worked with dividing with 11s and 12s.  They also tested over simple division today and have done so well!  Fourth graders are learning longer division and are quickly catching on!  Please continue to work on math facts at home! 

Reading/Language Arts:  This week the 3rd graders read about Two Bad Ants and the 4th graders read about The World According to Humphrey.  Both stories were told from the insect/hamster point of view and they were so intriguing and funny!  Next week, in our writing, we will attempt to do the same thing.  It will be fun to think of the world from the point of view of something so very small!  Next week, we will have vocabulary and spelling words.  Our tests will be on Thursday, instead of Friday.  Thank you!

Writing: Most of the children are finished with their persuasive writing.  This piece is due March 28th, next Thursday.  We will begin new writings next week.

Art: We finally finished up our parade scenes this week, and also worked on our caricature drawing, with step-by-step directions.  That was fun!  Parades will be in the hallway soon! 

Music: In choir, the children had fun picking out our favorite songs to sing this week!  It is such a moving moment for all of us to hear the kids sing out, “In Christ Alone!”  Goodness, they belt this hymn out!  Love it!!!  On Thursday, the kids practiced their recorders and finished up their solos! 

Have a wonderful weekend!
God’s Blessings!
Love,
Kim Brunkhorst



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