Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!  Another week almost over!  We are quickly approaching Spring Break. I hope everyone is looking forward to a nice relaxing week whether that be at home or on a short vacation.  I am heading to Dallas, Texas to my cousin's house.  I have done this for the last 4 years.  She has a pool in back yard and a hot tub.  These are my relaxing days!  I look forward to my time with her. We are one year off in age, she is older.  We both have teaching degrees and like similar things.  I couldn't think of a better way to spend my break then with her.  Not sure the weather will cooperate much while we are there but I don't care.  She keeps us busy with craft projects inside. Looks to be upper 60's lower 70"s. I will take that!    I hope everyone enjoys their time off!

Parent/Teacher Conferences -  I only have 3 parents not signed up for conferences. I have asked your kids to remind you of signing up.  I love meeting with each of you to discuss growth and areas where growth is still needed.  Here is the link to my sign-up.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0544a5a72ca1fe3-4thgrade4

Book Fair -  The book fair will be in the gym next week during conferences!  Your child will get a chance to look at the fair during their library time.  Maybe there will be a book there for book reports or something they will want to read over Spring Break.  The teachers will also have wish lists for their classrooms.

Food Pantry-  We have been gathering toilet paper, paper towels, and kleenex for the Food Pantry this week.  We do not have very much down there.  Thank you to those who have purchased items all ready.  One box of Kleenex or one roll of paper towels would sure help.  We will collect these items until the first week in April.

Language Arts -  This week we are reading a story called Sacagawea.  It is a very interesting story about her role in the Louis and Clark Corps of Discovery team.  She really did quite a bit to help them along their journey.  I think the kids found some interest in this story.  In grammar this week we have focused on abbreviations.  We covered abbreviations of People, places, mailing addresses, and measurement.  These did include days of week, months, hour, minute, second, states, street, lane, avenue, inch, foot, yard, ect.  They learned they mostly begin with a capitol letter and have a period at the end of the abbreviation.  This was a rather easy grammar lesson week.  I told them Unit 5 which we will start after Spring Break and the grammar is all review.  We will be reviewing all the things we have all ready touched upon this year.  Next week will be the Unit 4 test week.  We will test over a 3 day period on the unit.  I will also assign to them their next book report.  We will go over my expectations on books and the project next week.   That way if they are laying around on Spring Break they can work on their book report book. Some are very anxious for  me to get this going.  I like to see them excited about reading.  Sad thing is some of them are excited but don't choose to pick up a book on their own and just read it.  Hopefully that will change.

Math -  We finished up perimeter and area and will begin Division tomorrow or Monday.  This chapter is not an easy chapter for 4th graders.  The best part is we are getting some in before the Iowa Assessments.  Usually we don't have much division under our belts but this year we will for sure.  That will be very helpful.  Everyone took a pretest on this chapter and they found it frustrating because they didn't know a lot about what they were doing.  Some of them were just downright mad because we don't give any help on a pretest.  I am testing what they know and not knowing it is something I figure out on the pretest.  This means I really need to watch for mastery and do my best to teach this chapter.  Good Luck to us!

Social Studies -  We are talking about a lot of historical things in the Southeast in this lesson.  They learned about 3 settlements: St. Augustine, Roanoke Island, and Jamestown Virginia and they learned about 3 important people from the Southeast:  Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson  We talked a little about Thomas Jefferson's famous home "Monticello".  They have gone online and looked up videos about Monticello.  Many have loved this and found them very interesting.  They are coming to me and telling me stories of things from the videos that they are enjoying.  Now that is learning at work!  

This will be my last blog until after Spring Break.  Next week since we are meeting for conferences I won't put one out.  I may put some announcements out if there are things I need you to know.  I hope you have a great week with your kids.  

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels