Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  It's a short week this week!  I hope everyone had a great long weekend!  My older girls and I went to Chicago for the weekend!  We had a very nice time.  Always enjoy the long weekend!!  The kids were a little crazy on Tuesday.  I think excited to be back in the room together, but very talkative!!  I spent a lot of time trying to quiet them.  I asked them to go home have a good night but come back tomorrow with a better "school" attitude.  They did just that!  Wednesday was definitely a better day. 

Language Arts - This week we read My Brother Martin.  This is a biography about Martin Luther King, Jr written by his sister.  She tells the story of their childhood and what events led Martin to be the leader he became.  Some students already knew the reason behind him becoming a Civil Rights leader, some did not.  We are working on the 4 kinds of sentences in grammar. Your students have practiced declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory statements.  Spelling list this week is over short e and long e.  I know this has been a short week but they will be taking a spelling post test and end of week assessment on Friday like normal.

Math - We have been working on Place Value this week.  We have talked about the correct way to say numbers, place value positions, values of numbers using place value and the base 10 system as a whole.  The students are doing well so far.  We will see for sure after I get their first assignment.  This entire first chapter is focusing on place value.  It will get a little rough when we begin estimation and rounding.  Students understand how to round a number but when rounding very large numbers it gets difficult.  

Social Studies - This week we are learning about the Native Americans that were here in North America before Columbus arrived.  We have talked about the 2 major theories of how those Native Americas got here. We talked about them using the Bering Strait, which was a land bridge that connected Russia with Alaska.  We also talked about the fact that they may have just used a boat to get here.  I introduced some explorers to them.  These men were exploring the new land to see what they could find.  Most all explorers were looking riches. They also wanted to find to claim for their home country.  Next week we will be moving on to talk about government.  We just talk about the 3 branches of government and what they do for us.  We do not go to deep.

Tomorrow the kids are encouraged to support "Iowa" by wearing their favorite Iowa team.  The big Cy-Hawk game is on Saturday.  You can also represent UNI if you like.  It is a "Spirit" day tomorrow.

I hope all of you have a great weekend.  Have a safe trip if you are headed up to the big game.  It's an early one!  I am going up to spend the day with my kids.  Also, I hope all of you are enjoying this wonderful weather.  Temperatures have been pretty perfect.  It can't last forever.  It will either get extremely hot or cold one or the other.  We won't be spoiled long.

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels