HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  Here's wishing everyone a good, happy new year!!  Your children have come back to school relaxed, happy and ready to learn!  Thank you!!

A few new routines:

Cursive Writing:  We will be practice cursive writing over the next few months.  Your children will practice some of this at home.  Each Monday (or first day of the school week) your child will get an about 5 page packet of work sheets.  These sheets will be due each Friday.  The worksheets are mainly fourth grade sheets (but some are third).  On the bottom of some of the sheets is a practice paragraph that should be completed as they can-they do not need to write the whole paragraph.  If they do, I will count it as extra credit, but they should try and write at least one sentence from the paragraph.  This will give them some good, extra practice.

Writing:  Each week, we will be working on Expository writing.  Ask your child what they did today and what words they used.  (First, next, then, second, etc.)  Our writing time will be focused on answering the question being asked, writing out our thoughts clearly using information from the text (what we read) and balancing our writing with a self connection ( relating what we read to something in our own lives or background information)

Math ISAT Workbook:  Your child as a new ISAT practice math book that we will work in about 30 minutes a day.  I have already looked through the book and it seems like it will be really beneficial for test practice, but also reinforces our math concepts and skills from our Everyday Math.  We will still be completing four lessons per week in our math program.

Language Arts:  As stated above, we will be spending some of our time on Expository  Writing.  Several children came back to school ready to take an AR test-they were very proud of themselves!  Our next read aloud will be a Boxcar Children story from the series.  Homework:  I will leave the homework this week working on their cursive worksheets (due Friday) and reading at least 30 minutes per evening on their AR book.

Math:  Lessons 5.3-5.6 will be completed.  Homework:  Monday through Thursday.

Science:  No science this week.  I will start a new unit next week-more information to follow.

Social Studies:  We will work in our Time Magazine this week-learning about how some children go to school in Bangladesh (floating schools).  Some of our writing will also focus around this article.

Art:  Letter Designs - the focus is that simple letter shapes can be used as elements of complex designs.  Your child will combine two or more letter shapes to make LINEAR or RADIAL DESIGNS.  After Wednesday, ask your child about these "designs".

Lastly:  SNACKS- We could use some more snack.  Thanks.

Hope everyone had a nice break.

Sincerely, Jean Clement