Third and Fourth Grade News
From the Week of August 30, 2013
Hello, parents! We have had another terrific week at school! This week, we worked really hard getting into a regular schedule and into the swing of things here in the classroom! Your children are working so hard and I am proud of their progress already! :) In this newsletter, I will highlight areas of study form this week, as well as special classes. Please be sure to always check out upcoming events as well! Thank you for reading!
Religion- We studied the Creation story and finished our beautiful Creation books! Check them out hanging in our spare room! We also learned about Cain and Abel, and talked about how we often behave like Cain did. We are guilty of the same sins when we are jealous, envious, or bear false witness about our neighbor. We had an awesome discussion today about confessing those sins to God and then changing the way we feel about and treat our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Language Arts- This week in Reading, both classes shared their first reading story from their basals. The third graders read “A Fine, Fine School,” and fourth graders read the fun story “Because of Winn Dixie.” They completed story webs today where they had to identify and give details about the characters, the setting, and important events in the story. They also had to define their vocabulary words from the story. In Spelling, the students put their words into sentences and into abc order. They will do these activities almost every week with their spelling words, so they can gain the extra practice with them. In English this week, we focused on identifying complete sentences.
Math- As a whole class, we worked on fact families, finding missing addends, reading longer numbers, and solving word problems. We did some Problem Solvers together, which takes real world math problems, and breaks them down, so that they can solve and experience them. Good practice! Third grade worked with place value through the thousands place. Fourth grade worked on place value through ten million, and also worked with benchmark numbers. Both classes will review Chapter 1 on Monday and will test over their chapters on Tuesday. There is not a way for them to study this at home...I know they are all ready! Please continue to practice math facts at home with your child through flash cards and computer games. Thank you!
Social Studies- We are diving head-first into Missouri History! The kids are as excited about this as I am!!! This week, we learned all about what it means to be a Missourian. We studied the state seal, the flag, and the capital, and the capitol (and the difference between the two!). Today, they were energized because we opened packets from our State Representative., filled with books, stickers, pencils, and information about our state. We will be using these in class, but they will be coming home for keeps at the end of the unit. Thank you for taking the time to help your child fill out the family tree and the interview with a fellow Missourian. We will be sharing these next week! The children have made note cards of the vocabulary words they will need to know for the first chapter in our Missouri History texts. They will be bringing these home to study, and we will be talking a lot about them in school as well. We will have a quiz over this material next Friday. If you have any old photographs or artifacts you do not mind us borrowing for the next few weeks, please send them to school! I would love to have these items in the classroom for the children to look at and learn from. Thank you!
Homeschoolers joined us this week! :) It was great to get to know Emma, Linus, and Nathan! I am excited for our year together!
P.E.- This week in P.E., we learned how to do our stretches and paced ourselves as we ran. We also learned how to play regular dodgeball and pin dodgeball! What fun!
Music- With Mrs. Mundt and Mrs. Krekel, the children practiced their songs for the Fall Pageant, entitled “The Story”.. They sound so, so great! Please mark your calendars! The pageant is September 7th and 8th.
Computers-This week, the children just learned the expectations of the computer lab, and played some fun games on the computers. Next week, we will focus more on keyboarding skills.
Writers’ Workshop- We learned the steps, which are: Planning, Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Publishing. We began writing stories in our awesome notebooks!
Art- We studied some famous paintings from the Impressionist era, and have begun a painting ourselves. We did the drawing portion of it, including a horizon line and how to make objects in the distance look smaller. We will paint these with vibrant colors next week--breaking all the rules and painting things different colors than what the objects really are!
Upcoming Field Trips:
I have scheduled two field trips so far this year…
-(Still working on the date for the Fall Party and Hayride. This will include homeschoolers.)
-For full-time students only, as there is curriculum that corresponds with it:
~November 12th-Earthworks
~December 13th-School of Economics
I will let you know as I schedule more! Thank you!
Upcoming Events:
September-2nd-Labor Day--no classes
September 6th-volleyball home games against Messiah and MLA 5:30, 6:15, 8:30, and 9:15
September 7th and 8th--”The Story” pageant. All students are invited to sing!
September 7th-soccer game at Lutheran High against Calvary at 9:00
September 6th-13th-Book Fair!
September 13th-volleyball home games against Christ and Hope 6:00, 7:30, and 8:15
September 14th-soccer game at Lutheran High against Hope at 9:00
September 13th-15th-Fall Fun Fest. We have the opportunity to raise funds for our school at the Fall Funfest by parking cars at Charlie’s Auto Collision Center. A Sign-up Genius email was sent out this week. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090E4CAFAA22A20-fall All help will be greatly appreciated!
September 16th-School Pictures
September 21st-soccer game at Lutheran High against Trinity at 10:15
September 27th-volleyball games at Calvary Lutheran at 7:00, 7:45, 8:30, and 9:15
September 28th-volleyball games at Hope Lutheran at 9:30 and 10:15
September 28th- soccer game at Lutheran High against MLA at 9:00
Have a blessed Labor Day weekend! Have fun!
Kim
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