God's Most Amazing Creatures...: It was a wonderful first week of school! :)

Hello, 3rd/4th grade parents! We have had a wonderful first week of school! It feels SO good to be here…Learning all of these new things and routines amidst wearing masks, and doing a TON of hand washing, has been a new learning curve, but we are having fun! It has been fun getting to know all of our new friends. We have eased into the transition of all the core classes, with the exceptions of Spelling and Reading. We will begin those on Monday! This group of kiddos is so amazing! They are thoughtful, sincere, and we have been having so many laughs already! I am so proud of all of them, and feel so blessed to be their teacher! God is SO good! 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 learned all about God, who He is, and why we should want to know Him. We also learned about what the Bible is, how to use it, and why it was given to us. God is so good, and His blessings abound! We will have our first memory work next Tuesday!

Memory for next week:

8/25-“The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” ~Matthew 20:28

8/28-These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. ~John 20:31

Language Arts- We made time capsules, which we put away and will get back out in May to see our many changes. We traced our hands and feet. We also created “I Believe in Myself Selfie” pages that we stuck in there! We filled on surveys about our Favorite Things and answered questions about ourselves.

We began writing about our summer vacations on Tuesday. We will continue to work on these narratives at school. We will share them in Readers’ Theatre.

Next week, we will have our first Reading stories (3rd-“It’s a Fine, Fine School”/4th-“Because of Winn Dixie”) out of our basals, and we will have our first spelling tests next Friday. Spelling words, and our challenge word will come home on Monday in the assignment books. They will always be in this note, and I will also put them online for you to access. I ask that your child take their reading book home at least twice a week to review the story. We will have a comprehension test over the selection on Fridays as well.

Next week, we will also begin English, where we will identify complete and incomplete sentences.

The students were introduced to Patricia Polacco, the Author of the Month, this week, and they love her!

We practiced cursive e and l in cursive class. …and today the students received information about book reports, when they are due, and what is expected. Goodness, we completed A LOT of Language Arts this week!

Words for the Week of August 28^th:

3rd grade-“A Fine, Fine School”

crop, plan, thing, smell, shut, sticky, spent, lunch, pumpkin, clock, gift, class, skip, wing, hospital, fantastic

Challenge Word: covenant

4th grade-“Because of Winn Dixie”

blade, gray, past, afraid, magic, delay, amaze, drain, maybe, break, sale, hang, stain, glass, raft, jail, crayon, fact, stale, steak, fraction, trait

Challenge Word: covenant

*The challenge word is just that! We have been practicing it all week… Kiddos will need to know how to spell it and put it in a sentence that shows that they know what its definition is. If they get it wrong on their test, it does not count against them, BUT if they get it correct, they get extra credit! Thanks!

Math- We took our first mad minutes and I assessed where each child was in this process. We worked on Number Sense: place value through the hundred thousand, and also worked with putting numbers in standard, expanded, and word form. 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 completed our “Am I Ready?” pages, just so I could assess where each child is. These were not for a grade.
Please practice math facts at home with your child through flashcards and computer games. Thank you!

Social Studies- We dove right into our Social Studies books where we will be learning all about the United States this year! We learned a little about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights today. We also sang, “The National Anthem.”

Art- We created “Who Am I?” self-portrait riddles that are hanging in the hallway. I will post pictures Can you figure them out?!

As a reminder, graded papers will always come home on Fridays in our Homework Folders. We did not have very many this week, but be on the lookout for them in the weeks to come! Thanks! So far, everybody is doing very well and working very hard!

We also cleaned the classroom from head-to-toe today! :)

Next week, Special Classes begin! We will begin Spanish, Writers’ Workshop, Art, P.E., and Music. Fun times in the 3rd/4th grade!… :)

We sent some class pictures to our sweet Mrs. Mundt, who is now principal at Calvary Lutheran in Kansas City. She sent us back a picture of herself and told us how much she loved and missed us! Our God is so great, and blessings abound!