Dear Parents,
     Well, what a wet and yucky day!!!  We did not get to do our lap-a-thon today due to rain.  We are planning on doing it tomorrow.  It looks like the weather can cooperate for us  I am headed to Carroll to a track meet tonight.  I was hoping for it to be cancelled.  Such is the season!!!

Lap-a-thon -  This will take place Friday, April 25th.  We will run with 3rd and 5th grade from 9-10 in the morning.  I recommend you send two pair of shoes if you have them.  It will be damp from today's rain and will trample down into mud quickly.  Extra socks would be a good idea too.  Looks like tomorrow is to be a very nice day.

Language Arts - This week we read a story called Amphibians Alert!  This story is about amphibians and how they need protected from becoming extinct.  We are again reading a non fiction story with informational text.  Our spelling words this week dealt with final syllables ending in -le, -al, -el.  This was a difficult spelling list.  In grammar we have been discussing comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs. We also are covering negatives words.  Both of these topics are review topics.  We read poetry about amphibians and fables that deal with frogs.  We discussed lessons or morals to those fables.  It has been a good week because some of it is review.  Last week's Friday assessment was very good.  The students went up in scores.  Let's hope we maintain that this week.

Math- We finished up chapter 6 and took a test this week.  They did a fairly nice job on the test. I really feel all of them have mastered this topic with only a few basic fact errors.  I was very pleased with the test.  We will now spend  a couple days learning perimeter, area, and volume before we move on to division.  I saved those topics from geometry because I think they all go together and  we needed to know how to multiply to do area and volume.  Hopefully it will be an easy couple of days before we hit is hard again with division,

Social Studies - We have begun the Southwest Region.  We read lesson one on the Grand Canyon.  We are now watching a video on the Grand Canyon.  We will pick our next state next week for projects.  I know students are anxious to get it and get started.  They get excited about the projects.  This lesson focused on the founder and exploration of the Grand Canyon and how it was formed.  The movie focuses on wildlife and a little on the Native Americans there.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels