We have had a WONDERFULLY AWESOME second week of school!

 

Hi, 4th Grade Parents!  We have had a WONDERFULLY AWESOME second week of school! Parents, I am enjoying this class so very much.  We laugh all the time, they are all so creative and hard-working, and they seem to love to learn, love Jesus, and love school.  It is heart-warming for me every day.  Thank you for sharing them with me!  :)

 NEWS: 

*Homework Folders will come home this afternoon filled with graded work.  Please empty these and return the folder on Monday.  Anything with a letter grade lower than a B can be “redone” for half a credit per answer and turned back in when they return to school the next week.  (Except tests, please.) So far, everybody is doing very well and working very hard!

 *If you have not done so already, please send back in your child’s Faith Alive Bible.  We use these almost daily during Religion class.  Thank you!

*Graded work is recorded on Sycamore.  Please take time to see how your child is doing.   You will also be able to see their missing assignments and remind them to get their work in!  This week has been very transitional, as I have been learning how each child learns and works.  The students are learning what lessons and work time looks like in 4th grade.  Thank you for your patience and help with this. 

*4th graders will be taking our MAP Growth Assessments during the week of 9/22. 

 What is a MAP Growth Assessment?

It is a measure of what your student knows and how they are growing academically.  Timothy Lutheran School will be assessing students three times each school year for academic growth; early September, early January, and late April/early May.  

*PLEASE CONSIDER donating some time to work in our TIMMY BURGER BOOTH at the Fall Fun Fest over the weekend of September 18-20!  It is a lot of fun,  a perfect time to witness, and of course, a Timmy Burger will be in your future!  ;)  Families can sign-up together to work too.  You can find the link at the bottom of this page:

https://timothylutheran.com/timothylutheransteakburgers/

Here is what we have been up to this week:

RELIGION-We’ve been talking about Abram and Sarai, and God’s many promises to Abraham, and to us.  We had the mature discussion about Abraham choosing not to wait on God’s timing on his birth of a son, but to take matters into his own hands.  Our God forgave Abraham, and while there were consequences, He was able to turn those choices into blessings!  We related this to our lives today.  We discussed Jacob and Esau, and Jacob’s family,  and how we need to be careful in our relationships with our families and friends.  We need to love, serve, and honor one another.  We have been following our classroom Bible timeline and discussing how each of these families leads to Jesus, our Savior.  Next week, we will focus on the family of Joseph and on God’s many blessings in our lives. 

 At the beginning of the week, the kids write a prayer on a piece of paper…something that is on their heart or mind.  They can alter or change this prayer during the week, as they need.  At the closing of each day, we pray these prayers!  At the end of the week, I pass out these prayers to the students.  They don’t receive their own, so they can pray for someone else all weekend…So, if you see these little slips of paper coming home, that is what they are!  How blessed we are that we have the privilege to take our needs to God in prayer! 

 MEMORY for Next Week:

9/1-

Books of Wisdom and Poetry

Job

Psalms

Proverbs

Ecclesiastes

Song of Solomon

9/4-

Books of the Prophets

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Lamentations

Ezekiel

Daniel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

LANGUAGE ARTS- We read the first nine chapters of the novel, Because of Winn Dixie.  We LOVE this story, and have had some great discussions about character-building, and some fun stories of antics of our pets!  We analyzed the characters, wrote summaries of the chapters, and studied the new vocabulary words.  We took our first reading and spelling tests today and the students did very well!  The students also received information about their first book reports.  They have each picked out a Newbery Award winning book to read and understand their projects.  This information should be in their homework folders. We also worked on using editing symbols this week, as we corrected sentences with grammatical and spelling errors, in something called a DOL (Daily Oral Language).  Busy, busy!

SPELLING WORDS for the Week of September 4th:

Story: Because of Winn Dixie (Chapters 10-18)

admire, magnet, contest, method, custom, rally, soccer, engine, sudden, finger, accident, mitten, intend, fabric, flatten, rascal, gutter, mammal, happen, cannon

Challenge Word:  concoction

MATH- This week, we worked on putting numbers in standard, word, and expanded forms.  We read numbers up through the millions, and worked with ordering numbers, and using place value to round.  We have also been working hard on memorizing our multiplication facts in class.  We are up to our 2’s!  They are really starting to realize the importance of learning these!  By the end of the year, it is my hope and prayer that each student will have their multiplication tables memorized.  (0-12)  

SCIENCE-We worked in our new Science books this week!  We discussed how God created our world and how His design plays a part in the structures and functions of living things.  We observed plants and their structures and learned what the words worldview and botanist mean.  We have been discussing ecosystems, communities, organisms, and populations within our habitats here in Missouri.  We discussed what plants need in order to live and emphasized the space needed for both animals and plants to survive.  We had a short object lesson concerning space, and how it would be hard to thrive without enough.  Students wrote short stories called “A Day in the Life of a Crowded Plant.”  We shared these in class.  

SPECIAL CLASSES

ART- We reviewed our cursive letters, wrote our names in cursive, did a mirror image of them, and made them into Cursive Creatures!  Please come check them out in the hallway outside of our classrooms.  :)

WRITERS' WORKSHOP- We read the story "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" and discussed sequencing and chronological order.  We then talked about our own summer vacations and began writing down important events and are going to shape these into our own written work. 

P.E.-This week we learned the correct way to stretch, run our laps, and we reviewed body skills like skipping, galloping, hopping, jumping, crab walk, grapevine, and bear walk.  We had some fun in relay races!

This was such a FUN week!  As always, thank you for your prayers and guidance as we travel through this school year together.  Have a wonderful weekend!

God’s Blessings!

Kim

It was a WONDERFUL first week of school! :)

 Hello, 4th grade parents!  We have had a spectacular first week of fourth grade!  

The kiddos have learned many new routines and have played some fun games to get to know one another.  We have eased into the transition of all the core classes, with the exception of Reading and Spelling.  We will begin that on Monday!  I have had so much fun getting to know your child.  We have had loads of fun this week, and had lots of laughter together too!  They love to learn, they love to laugh, and they love each other!  We are becoming a little classroom family.  :)   It is such a beautiful thing to witness.  Besides all of the fun we have had, I have highlighted just a few things below that we have learned this week:

RELIGION- This week, we began studying and learning from our Religion books!  We discussed the Creation Story, the Fall into Sin, and the Tower of Babel.  We learned how the days of Creation are connected, and how God’s intricate plan is awesome!  We discussed the vocabulary words about God:  He is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent!  We discussed our blessings, and read Bible verses sharing the power of God.  We are using our Faith Alive Bibles daily.  Please send these back to school because we will use these every day in Religion class.  By the end of this school year, your kiddo will be a pro at looking at and finding Bible verses, with their favorites highlighted or underlined. 

Our first verse is our theme for the school year:  “Rooted in Christ.”

Next week’s MEMORY: 

8/25- The Old Testament

Books of Moses

Genesis 

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

8/28-

Books of History

Joshua

Judges

Ruth

1 & 2 Samuel

1 & 2 Kings

1 & 2 Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah

Esther

LANGUAGE ARTS- We used our reading and writing skills when we created our time capsules, which we will put away and get back out in May to see our many changes.  We traced our hands and feet.  We also filled in sheets about our Favorite Things, wrote a letter to our future selves, took a mad minute, and created selfies.  We practiced a lot of cursive this week, and reviewed the letters l, h, k, t, a, d, c. The students were introduced to Judy Blume, the Author of the Month, this week, and they love her!  We read Freckle Juice and began Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. We also began writing about our summer vacations today!  Next week, we will have our first Literature unit (Because of Winn Dixie), and we will have our first spelling test next Friday.  Spelling words, and our challenge word will come home on Monday in the assignment books.  They will always be in this weekly note, and they are online for you to access on our blog.  I ask that your child take their reading book home at least once a week to review the story at home.  We will read it here several times, as well.  We will have a comprehension test over the selections on Fridays as well.  Next week, we will also begin English, where we will identify complete and incomplete sentences. Monday, the students will also receive information about book reports, when they are due, and what is expected.  They are reading Newbery Award winning books.  

SPELLING WORDS for the Week of August 28th:

Story: Because of Winn Dixie (Chapters 1-7)

blade, gray, past, afraid, magic, delay, amaze, drain, maybe, break,

sale, hang, stain, glass, raft, jail, crayon, fact, stale, steak, fraction, trait

Challenge Word: concoction

MATH- We took our first mad minutes and I assessed where each child was in this process.  Many of them already know their multiplication facts, and that is wonderful!  We completed some Problem Solvers, which takes real world math problems, and breaks them down, so that they can solve and experience them.  This is such good practice! We also finished our first unit in our new math books.  We talked about how we are math “superheroes” and what our math talents are.  We also reviewed simple fractions and how they are a big part of our world.  Next week, we will begin Unit 2 about Place Value.  

SCIENCE-Today we began reading about how our world is connected in our science books from the Missouri Department of Conservation.  We learned the difference between living and non-living things, and organisms and populations.  We went on a field investigation and looked within our schoolyard watershed to find all evidence of living and non-things outside.  We recorded these on our field clipboards.  We saw a moth, butterflies, bumblebees, grasshoppers, cattails, some spotted Swamp Milkweed, and a lot of different trees and weeds!  

ART-We made self-portraits with a “Who Am I?” riddle!  Check these out in the hallway!  

WRITERS' WORKSHOP-We began writing personal narratives about our summer vacations.  

COMPUTER LAB-4th graders learned how to make a document on Google Docs this week. We will begin friendly letters to me next week!  This year, my goal is that students will become proficient with Google Docs and their keyboarding skills.  We will begin publishing our own works!  

Next week, we will begin Spanish, P.E., and Music. 

As a reminder, HOMEWORK FOLDERS will come home this afternoon filled with graded work.  There was not much this week, but I wanted the kiddos to get into the habit of placing work there. If a paper just has a star on it, please know that it was looked at or discussed, but it was not for a letter grade in the grade book.  All papers with percentages on them are put in the gradebook.  Please empty these and return the folder on Monday.  Although we did not have very many assignments this week, anything with a letter grade B or below can be “redone” for half credit per answer, and turned back in on Mondays.  So far, everybody is doing very well and working very hard!

Personal News:  I have shared this with some of you, but I wanted to make sure you were aware, so you can please pray!  In the last 6 months, my dad was diagnosed with cancer directly tied to the Agent Orange he spread while in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War.  His doctors have tried quite a few different treatments, and his body is not responding well.  This week, we had to take him back to the hospital and he is currently in ICU.  As I learn how to take care of my beloved aging parents, (Mom has Parkinson's) my plan is to be here as much as I can, but please know that I may have to miss some school.  Serving you and your families, and teaching and taking care of your kiddos is my passion and love!  Thank you for praying for my family.  Please let me know how I can pray for yours. Much love!

Have a blessed weekend,

Kim

It has been a WONDERFUL first day of school!

 It has been a WONDERFUL first day of school!  

We began with a great Chapel message from Pastor Ryan--- 

We are rooted in CHRIST!