Dear Parents/Guardians,

I hope you had a relaxing weekend. I had out of town guest and they thoroughly relaxed! ;)

I have a new format for Room 204's Blog. The calender on the right hand side isn't working yet, but it will be soon.

The children should have brought home  a permission slip to attend the performance, <em>The Hundred Dresses</em>. This performance will be on November 10, 2009. We will leave Ray at 9:15 a.m. and return at 12:30 p.m. We will eat in the classroom when we return. I  already have the two chaperones needed to assist our classroom.  There will be other field trips if you'd like to attend.

I will be sending home reminder letters to those who still owe class fees. These fees are very important in that they help to purchase things that support our student's learning. You can arrange to pay in intervals, just let me know what arrangement is best for you.  Please forgive me if I send you a letter for payment and you've already paid. If you receive a letter and have already paid, I will check my records.

This week we are working on the following:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We will take the test on <em>Ramona, The Pest</em> on Monday. We will take the spelling test on last week's words on Tuesday.We will be reading <em>The Treehouse </em>in our OpenCourt readers. The focus will be on comparing and contrasting things. We will continue to identify action verbs. We are writing short autobiographies and will work on editing our writing.

We will practice writing the undercurve letters. Lower case<em> i</em>  and<em> t</em>  will be practiced this week. There will be cursive practice for homework.

MATH:

We will be working on Lessons 2-3 - 2.7 in Everyday Math. These lessons focus on patterns for finding missing numbers, identifying the values of digits, writing number stories and solving multidigit addition problems. Please continue to practice the basic subtraction facts with your child. Many of the children have difficulty with these facts. Please remind your child it is easier to add up to the largest number. For example: 12-7=___. Ask: What number do you add to 7 to get 12.

HomeWork: Home Link 2.3, Home Link 2.4, Home Link 2.5, Home Link 2.6, Home Link 2.7. Math Boxes will be assigned as needed. Please check your child's assignment book.

SCIENCE:

We will investigate what happens when water is "pulled" down a slope by gravity. We will have a test next week  on what we have learned so far in our unit on water. I will review key concepts before the test.

SOCIAL STUDIES:

We will learn about globes and maps in <em>Map Essentials</em>. We will learn how satellite images, globes, and maps show us many different kinds of information about our world. There will be a test on the key concepts next week. It will cover Activity One, <em>Communities from Above </em>and this week's activity, <em>Globes and Maps</em>. We will review before the test.

MUSIC:

Ms. Pickens will give a final test this week.

<em>HAVE                     A                              GREAT                                    WEEK!!</em>