Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  It's a good week.  Two good things happened this week.  One is our amazing volleyball team!!! They are undefeated in the conference.  Tuesday's game was quite tense.  Going all five games is crazy.  I would just like to say come out and watch them.  They will not disappoint.  The other amazing thing is 7 of the members of the starting team are St. Malachy graduates!!  The second good thing is, I went to Des Moines to see my brain surgeon and everything is great.  Everything looks as it should and I don't need another scan for 2 years now.  YAY ME!!  I am very relieved and really feel like I can put all of that behind me.  Now, with all that said let's talk about school and your kids.

Book Orders - I aksed that the book orders be due today.  I received one order.  The Scholastic website was not up and working today so I didn't place the order.  The good news is you still have another day to place an order.  Please, send any order in tomorrow.  Whenever you purchase books for your kids I receive bonus points towards the classroom.  I order books for the shelf in my room through these bonus points.  I have a great shelf with great titles but new books are always being published!  I would love to have some newer titles.

Language Arts - We have read the story Stormalong this week.  This story is a Tall Tale.  It is a story that is exaggerated and is meant to be humorous.  Tall tales normally tell a story about how something came about or why something is.  This story is about a boy named Alfred Bulltop Stormalong.  He is boy that is huge as a baby and stays huge all his life.  Very very tall and muscular.  He loves the sea and works on ship.  He is an outcast due to his size.  He goes away to try to fit in somewhere else but ends up coming back to the sea.  He dies and is buried near the sea with many sailors in attendance.  Every since then seamen first class put "A.B.S." safter their names.  Most people believe this means "Able-Bodied Seaman" but the Old New England seafaring men know different they believe it is for Alfred Bulltop Stormalong.  Fun story to read.  We are working on homophones for spelling words.  We have been working on Capitalization with Historical Events, Historical Documents, and writing titles.  Remember tomorrow is Friday so study those vocabulary words and spelling words.

Math - We finished chapter 1 this week!! I think the students all did a great job!!  We will begin chapter 2 tomorrow.  This chapter is on multiplication.  We will really be dissecting multiplication and really understanding the meaning of what we are doing and why we can work problems this way.  I am excited because I feel like I am getting a better understanding myself.  I intend for this chapter to move along just like the first one.  We may just need to stop and take our time on certain lessons if we are struggling.  This chapter has more lessons in it.  The first chapter consisted of 8 chapters and this one has 12 chapters.  At home you could begin practicing the multiplication facts.  If they know their facts this will be easier on the students.

Social Studies -  We have begun talking about Government.  We will talk about the 3 levels of Government and the three branches.  The levels are Local, State, and National.  The branches are Legislative, Executive, and Judicial.  We also talk about the Constitution.  We will also discuss each branch and what it does.

Next week we will have a testing week for Language Arts.  We have covered the whole first unit of 5 stories so now we check what the students learned and retained.  We will also have a writing activity we will work on.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. I am off to spend the weekend watching Josie play softball.  She plays in Norwalk and Bondurant.  We have had fun meeting families from other teams in our conference and becoming friends. Conference teams represented on her softball team are Clarinda, Shenandoah, Lewis Central, and Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln. The last one isn't in the Hawkeye 10 but we meet up with them periodically in sports.  We played them in Volleyball last weekend at Red Oak tournament.  Fun experience.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels