Dear Parents,

     Hello and Happy Thursday!!!!  I hope all of you had a great weekend!  We had a great time in Chicago.  I have shared a couple photos from out trip.  The first one is of the Ferris Wheel I can now cross off my bucket list!  It constantly moves and you have to jump in as it's moving, which is very slow.  It was fine but when we got to the top it stopped!! That was NOT okay with me!!  I about panicked!!  The 2nd picture is of "The Bean" in Millennium Park.  It is in the Guiness Book for largest mirror or something close to that.  I used to have the book it was in and it is missing. As you can see it was a very busy place.  It is good to be home and headed back into our routine.  The students seemed a little tired on Tuesday but things have returned to normal.

Here is the Ferris Wheel on Navy Pier we rode!!

This is what they call the "Bean" in Millinnium Park.

Language Arts -  This week we read the story My Brother Martin, which is a biography about Martin Luther King Jr. written by his older sister.  We learned about his life as a boy and the things he enjoyed and what ideas that may have lead him to being a significant leader in the Civil Rights Movement.  Talking about a topic they can't even grasp is hard, BUT I am glad they don't understand.  Vocabulary words used were segregation and injustice which I think are higher level words for this age.  They really don't understand why in the world segregation ever took place or why it happened. This shows maybe Martin's work was successful!  Grammar this week was learning the 4 kinds of sentences.  Ask your child to describe each to you:  declarative sentence, interrogative sentence, imperative sentence, and exclamatory sentence.  We talked about all four, what they are and what punctuation they end in.  We also discussed prefixes this week.  Please be sure they study their spelling words and vocabulary words tonight for the end of the week assessment.

Math -  I am very pleased with how the students are all doing in Math so far.  They have done a great job learning and showing me they understand this first few assignments.  I told them how proud of them I am today.  With that, we moved onto rounding numbers and talking about estimation.  This is where students begin to struggle.  I felt like we did a good job on the lesson today but will finish it up tomorrow.  We will review what we did today and then move on.  Please pay attention to the homework sheet that will come home Friday night.  This may be the one that causes them some problems.  I hope to have all their confidences built up so they will be comfortable to do the work on their on.  After this lesson we are ready for a mid-chapter review.  This is a stop and check how we are doing retaining what we have learned in the first half of the chapter.

Social Studies -  We are talking about different climates. We talked about the 3 factors that influence climate. One is where we are compared to the equator, one is if we are near a large lake or ocean, and the third is elevation.  All of these affect climate.  We also talked a little about the water cycle.  The next lesson will focus on resources common to the regions.  This will be last lesson in the chapter so a test is coming!!

I hope everyone gets out and enjoys the nice weather this weekend!!

God Bless,

Mrs. Sickels