Dear Parents,

     I Am Back!!!!   I am here and doing great!!  I am enjoying being back with the students and getting into a routine with them.  I do go home right after school each night and am very tired.  I try to take it easy all evening, but even that has gotten better since the beginning of the week.  I have more energy than I thought I would.  I bet I can blame the students smiles on my energy level!!  It truly has been a great week back.  I will admit only thing I miss is my "coffee ladies" and "lunch ladies".  We did coffee more than lunch.  

Mrs. Gammell did a great job!  She did everything I would have done.  I walked in and my plans are right on track.  What an awesome feeling for a teacher.  I know that the kids learned while I was gone and that was the important thing.  Things won't change much, except she did a lot of worksheets together that I consider homework for the students to do on their own. So students will be kept busier and learn the importance of a study hall and working hard. 

Language Arts - Students have been taking the Unit 1 test this week.  It is good for me to come back and look at how much they learned and talk to Mrs. G to hear where they struggled.  We will finish this test today.  Next week we will dig into Unit 2, which will be new to me.  From what I can see in the text, we will be busy, busy, busy!!

Math - They are doing well in Math.  Again it was great to see them right on track!!  We have discussed the distributive property this week and used it to help us work on multiples of 10, 11, and 12.  We worked with flash cards to practice our facts too.  I know they did a lot of work out of the book while I was away which is great, but I do more work using  worksheets.  We will use the problems in the book for guided practice, or if I can see we are struggling with the skill I will start by having them complete work out of the book and spend a couple days on that lesson.

Social Studies -  This week we begin talking about how the Economic System of the United States began.  We begin by discussing trade and what it was like then and now.  We will move on to learn what our economic system is called and what it is primarily based on.  It is a free enterprise system, which says we can produce and sell whatever we want.  It is based on supply and demand.  How much something is needed and how much we have of it.  Great lesson for kids to learn but for some it may be a lot to grasp. Chapter 3 is the last chapter over the United States as whole.  In Chapter 4 we begin discussing the regions separately.

I would like to say thank you to all of you for being patient during unfortunate time.  It did put me at ease knowing that my classroom was covered very well, by someone who I knew would teach the kids.  I appreciate you working with her.  I would like to point out I will still be missing half days here and there because I have to continue to see a neurologist for the seizure I had.  He will decide if the tumor was the actual reason for the seizure, which we are pretty sure it was.  He will decide when to take me off the medicine and when I can drive again, which still looks to be January 21st.  

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels