Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!  I hope you are all having a great week!   The Christmas Program was fabulous last night.  Hopefully the little snow fall and Christmas Music put everyone in the Christmas Spirit!  I was struggling to get there with 60 degree temperatures!  That is not Christmas!  The kids love having Mrs. Stoner as their music teacher and seem to have a lot of fun with her while they are learning.  We are very grateful to have her at our school.  I am asking for you help.  Please, please, check with your child and see if they need red checking pens or pencils or new colored pencils for the classroom.  Some of them I am constantly loaning them these items.  With half a year down some of these items need replaced for sure.  I keep telling the students to ask for more.  Thank you in advance.

Language Arts -  This week we are reading a very interesting narrative nonfiction story about Antarctica.  It is called Antarctic Journal, about the author who went and lived there for 4 months.  She then created this story from her journal entries.  I think we all found it interesting.  Do they love it, probably not but they did find some of it interesting because it is not a place we would visit on vacation.  Plus they all like to talk about penguins.  In grammar we were talking about the proper use of words like may, can, might, could, should,  would, and must.  These words can easily be used incorrectly.  The students were learning what each expresses and trying to use them properly.  This is difficult because they read a sentence  and if a word fits an it makes sense they write it down, but with these you have to figure out what the sentence is expressing and which word is more appropriate there.  They had a difficult time. Tomorrow is there end of the week test.  I did not get the words on quizlet this week, I am falling behind.  I will get them on today because I know some use this as their study aid.

Math - We are finally at the end of our chapter.  Today we are working on the review. Tomorrow we will check that together and Monday they will take the test.  I am excited to be finishing up.  We can then move on to chapter 3.  It is over double-digit multiplication.  I have some "fun" math we will do the week before Christmas which involves plotting points and coloring a Christmas picture.  It gives them a little break from the regular grind of math.  Also, if make mistake your picture doesn't turn out correctly. They are doing a great job of working hard on their math.  

Social Studies -  We have our first Map test our of the way.  Some did awesome, some still have some work to do.  Please be sure your child is studying up on those Northeast states and capitals.  We will have another map test next week probably towards the end of the week.  We will see if those who aced it can do it again and it's a chance for some to redeem themselves!   We are also working on putting more states in our interactive notebooks.  They are working on Maryland today and I think we are doing New York tomorrow.  

Absent -  I will be absent on Monday.  I am taking my mother-in-law to her eye doctor in the morning and moving my college kids home for Christmas Break in the afternoon.  They live in sororities and you switch rooms every semester so they have to basically move out. Which is not convenient but not my rules!

We only have 4 ornaments on our tree!  Hopefully more of you will be getting out your decorations over the weekend so your child can add one to our tree.  Just a reminder that we get out for Christmas Break on Thursday the 21st.  That day we will have a small celebration in the morning with our class, we will have our Christmas Caroling at noon and them a movie in the afternoon.  I will give you more details about the day next week.  Have a great weekend!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels