Friday, January 10, 2014

Newsletter 1-10-14




Third and Fourth Grade News
From the Week of January 10, 2014

Dear Parents,
            It feels so great to be back after a long break, and a snow day!  I missed the kiddos so much!  Thank you all for the great gifts and kind cards.  I am so blessed.  We have gotten back into the swing of things here in the classroom.  Please take a look below at what we have been up to! 
There are many important events coming up!  There is not school on Monday, January 20th, because of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.  Keep your eyes peeled for important information regarding National Lutheran Schools’ Week festivities (January 26-February 2).  We will sing in church, enjoy dress up days, invite grandparents, put on a talent show, and lead worship services.  It will be a fun filled week!!  Please pay special attention to the list of important dates below!
Information regarding the talent show (January 31) was sent home in an email.  Participants may volunteer via Sign-Up Genius.  Auditions will be Wednesday, January 29, after school.  Please sign-up soon, soon, soon!
            The end of the quarter is today, and progress reports will go home on Wednesday. (Home-school reports will go home on Tuesday.) Please be on the lookout for these.  Thank you!  
            Achievement tests are coming up!  These will be February 24th-28th.   The testing will be in the mornings from 8:30-12:00 every day.  The home school students are invited to do this as well.  If you are interested, please let me know and Mr. K will order your supplies.  Thank you! 

Here is what we did this week:
In Religion this week we learned about Samson and his great power.  We also talked about how he always gave into temptation and time and time again, like us, God forgave him, and reminded him of His great love. 
In Language Arts this week, third graders read a story called, “Yonder Mountain: A Cherokee Legend” and fourth graders read a story called, “Sacajawea,” which was the true story about her travels with Lewis and Clark. We are deep into cursive now and having lots of fun!   We reviewed contractions and abbreviations this week.  Third graders shared their historical fiction book reports today.  It was so amazing for me to see their interest levels peaked as they shared some of these stories.  I can tell they feel in love with reading—which is awesome for a teacher to see!  I had kids excited to share about the Civil War, about magicians, about discrimination in the south, about the Titanic.  The projects were amazing too!  I hope you had some fun and interesting conversations at home about these as well.  Thank you for reminding your children to read at home!  I will send home information about the 3rd grade 3rd quarter book report next week.   

In Math this week, third grade worked with reading calendars and schedules.  The fourth graders worked with double bar graphs and line graphs.  Both groups will test over these things next week and then dive head first into multiplication. 

During Social Studies, we have continued our study of Missouri and are talking about the Native Americans to the region.  We will learn a little bit about Martin Luther King Jr. next week!  We will have a full-week about him, with whole-class spelling words, stories we will read as a class, and several fun writing and social studies projects.  Be on the lookout for these! 

During Art, we learned about Snowflake Bentley and then cut out snowflakes to create snowflake snowmen.  We will finish these up next week.  Please check out some of the actual pictures Snowflake Bentley captured of snowflakes above.  They are amazing and such wondrous works of God! 

In P.E. this week, we played scooter soccer, with our HUGE ball.  This was fun, and full of laughs! 

In Music, we prepared songs for National Lutheran Schools’ Week. 

For Writers’ Workshop, we continued work on our collaborative student projects.  These are very cool, and it is fun to see imaginations go wild with planning theses, and I am looking forward to publishing them soon. 


UPCOMING EVENTS:

JANUARY
20- No School, Martin Luther King Day
26- Mrs. Carrasco's Birthday
26—Feb. 2 National Lutheran Schools' Week
31-Grandparents’ Day-12:30 dismissal

FEBRUARY
5-
Mornings with Mom/Special Person
13-P/T conferences-1:00 dismissal
17-President’s Day-no school
24-28-Achievement tests

Have a great weekend!


Yours in Christ,

Kim Brunkhorst



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