Catholic School Spirit!

What a fun week.  I meant to take photos every day but I only managed to take it on Tacky Tuesday.  The kids loved wearing their clothes backwards and mismatched.

I asked the students what their favorite act was from St Mary's music assembly and most of them said it was the boy who did beatboxing.  (That's where you make sounds with your mouth)  So when we came back to the room I played the Dynamite song for them performed by one person using only his mouth for instrument sounds  They liked it so much it turned into a dance party.  Here's the link: Dynamite

Today was our pep rally.  The kids cheered, sang, danced, and participated in a relay race.  Thanks for the extra photos Mrs. Rahill!

Sweatshirt Relay Race

Of course we did do school work as well. :-)  We learned more about weather, compared numbers with <, >,=, learned to compare and contrast, and sharpened our map skills.  We also added to our hallway timeline. 

Next week we will not use the reading series, therefore we have no vocabulary or spelling words.  We will be reading and discussing Flat Stanley .  You can look forward to Stanley coming home before the winter break so your child can have adventures with him and write about them in a special journal.

Important dates:
1/30, 1/31- DeSales musical at the Palace- I went last night- it was wonderful!
2/6- Candy orders due 

Catholic Schools Week

The coming week will be full of fun activities to celebrate Catholic Schools Week.  Be sure to pay attention to the blue sheet that was sent home so your child doesn't miss out on all of the dress down opportunities.  There is one change on the sheet- the Monday Prayer Service is at 8:30, not 9:40 as stated.

This past week we were very busy in all of our subjects:

Reading: identified cause and effect, enjoyed more books by our Author of the Month- Jan Brett, and practiced combining sentences with the word "and".
Writing: we finally finished our digital opinion piece about the best pet to have.  The students learned how to use MS Word to type.  They had fun using the Word Art and pasting a picture from a google search.
 Math: we worked with expanded form and learned to read and write numerals in different ways.
Science: continued learning about weather by predicting and recording the weather and then used our data to draw conclusions and observations.
SS: used map coordinates to find points of interest on a map
Religion: learned more about the 7 Sacraments.
Cooking: in our monthly "cooking" lesson we learned to make Rice Krispie Treats. 

Enjoying our treats.

Special Dates: 1/26- Prayer Service at 8:30, Wear PJ's to school, collections for SPCA begin
1/27 - Wear clothes that clash, music assembly
1/28- crazy hat day, 9:40 Mass, ice cream at lunch, Pizza served for snack from Dr. Fike
1/29-Wear clothes from 70's and 80's, SPCA presentation
1/30- Pep Rally, wear sports uniforms or PE uniforms

Thank you MLK Jr!

In SS this week we read and wrote about MLK Jr.  After learning about his "I Have a Dream" speech, each student wrote about their own dreams that would make the future a better place.  Our students dream of a world without litter, bullying, killing, or drugs.  Sounds like a great dream.

This is our door for January.

We are published!  We were so excited to receive our shipment of books.  We took the time for each student to read his/her own page to the class.  The books went home with the students on Thursday.  I hope you enjoyed reading about everyone's traditions.  If you did not order the book but would still like to, I sent home a flier with instructions on ordering directly from the publisher.

In L.A. we have been identifying the author's purpose for writing the stories we are reading (P for persuade, I for inform, and E for entertain).  On Friday the students started making their own Author's Purpose pies.  Next time you are reading together, see if your child can tell you what the author's purpose is.

Our unit in Science is weather.  We made models of three kinds of clouds- cumulus, cirrus, and stratus.  If you would like to see the Prezi I made to go along with this unit, click on link.   Weather Prezi

In Math we are working on expanded form.  ( 462= 400+60+2)   We used these cups to help us practice.  They are easy to make using Styrofoam cups.  To use, first turn the cups so they are at the number you want.  Then open the cups to see the expanded form of the number.  (see below)

These are the New Year's resolutions we started last week.

Special Dates:
1/17-1/18- Speakers will be at all area Masses to talk about DeSales.  Please have your child wear his/her uniform to Mass.
1/19- No school for MLK Jr. 

A Two Day Work Week!

We obviously didn't get a lot done this week, but there are a few things I'd like to share with you.

I saw this on Pinterest and had to try it.  The students thought it was very cool and wanted me to post the instructions: put a few drops of food coloring in a balloon and then fill it with water and tie it up.  Freeze it and then pull the balloon off.  Each ice ball will probably look different.  I asked DeSales' science teacher, Mr. Welt, why it looks like this and he explained that the outside froze very quickly and pushed all of the air bubbles to the inside to make the blue "tree" shape.  If anyone tries it at home I would be happy to post your results.

 

 ELA: On Monday we took some time to sit in a circle, nibble on candy canes, and we each told about something from Christmas break.  It was a nice way to start back and give everyone a chance to speak.  We also started writing about out New Year's resolutions.  We will finish that up next week. 
Math: We reviewed for the chapter 4 test and the review sheets were sent home.  The test is postponed until Monday.

We will not try to make up last week's reading or spelling test.  Since we have a test every week, I have enough assessments to use for grading purposes and it doesn't make sense to try to squeeze in the test.
Important Dates:
1/12 and 1/13- STAR testing- please be sure your child has enough sleep and a good breakfast
1/14- Mass- 9:40
Enjoy the (long) weekend! 

One Day in December

This week the students took a hand at writing the blog.  We wanted to tell you a little bit about how our day goes.  Each student chose a photo for which to write a caption.  We then revised and edited each caption as a class.  Please ask your child which caption he/she helped write.  Enjoy reading!

There are bells on the door for Christmas in December.  Each bell on the door has a name of  a classmate.  Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus are in the stable.

Here is a picture of Jesus and Mary.  They are near a shining star. Jesus is a special hero.

The windows are nicely decorated.  We colored them ourselves.  They are very colorful. 

Here are the trees that we made.  They shine in the dark at night.  We wrote what we do for Christmas. 

The Christmas trees on the lockers are made by us.  We put sparkles and glitter glue on them.   We wish we could do the Christmas trees all day.  We like doing that, we had fun. 

In the morning we get unpacked and then we do what is posted.  Morning work is fun.  When we are done we read a book or study math facts with a buddy.  

Morning work is kind of hard but we still do it.  After morning work we sometimes get to play on ipads.

Math War is fun.  It is a game where two people play.  They put down two cards and add them together.  Whoever gets the biggest sum wins.  There are a couple of groups.  We did Math War today.  

For calendar, first we say, "Today is Tuesday, December 16th, 2014."  Then we say how many days we have been in school.  The number is 69 days.  Then we ask a question. 

Math is cool.  It makes you smart.  Our class is doing math.  My friend likes doing math.  We were doing two digit subtraction.

We are doing math.  It is hard what we are doing in math but it is fun. 

Once a month we read with our reading buddies.  But this time we made a bookmark for our fifth grade reading buddies.  We do fun things together.

Today we were with our reading buddies.  We did a paper about matching  Christmas songs to pictures.

We did really well and we worked really hard.  It was fun. Our fifth grade buddies are nice and good at helping us.  

We like our reading buddies, they help us read.  They are nice to us. 

Today our class had to talk about traditions.  We had to bring something in and talk about the things we do every year.  So this is the class with their traditions.
We all wish you a Merry Christmas!

 I hope you enjoyed our writings.  The students enjoyed writing them!
Below are two photos Mrs. Knuutila took during the Christmas concert.  One of our classmates did a wonderful job playing "All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth". 

One of our students was excited to have his mom bring in his puppy to show the class this week.  Buckley is such a calm, lovable dog; the students enjoyed petting him.

This week we "traveled" to Mexico, Germany, England, and Spain.  We learned a little about the customs in each country.  Here we are making "crackers", which are popular in England.  Please ask your child about the "souvenirs" your child brought home from their travels.

This is what our tree looked like the morning of our party. 

We started out the day by opening up our presents- just like Christmas morning :-)

Mrs. Parfinski loved the fleece throw the students made for her.  The kids and I will all miss her.  What a wonderful gift she has been for our class.

Our Christmas party centered around Jesus's birthday.  This student is showing some of the party decorations.  We enjoyed several activities today.  We had a lesson in fractions by frosting graham crackers by 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and finally a whole.  We also practiced different parts of speech by playing Christmas Mad Libs and enjoyed a Christmas movie and popcorn.

Thank you so much for all of the Christmas gifts.  You were very generous to Mrs. Parfinski and me.  I appreciate all of your kind words and support throughout the year.
Merry Christmas to everyone and God bless!
See you next year!

Holiday Happenings!

We have been super busy these last few weeks.  Unfortunately, I am unable to download the photos from my camera but I will try to rectify that problem over Christmas break.  We have been keeping the real reason for Christmas in the forefront by celebrating Advent together and reading/writing about Christmas. 

This week we wrote about what we would give Jesus for his birthday.  Like the Thanksgiving writing that came home, I did not correct the children's writing- it comes straight from their hearts.  The children shared their thoughts with the class and I was very moved by what the children wrote. Please have your child read it to you when it comes home this week.  Our Christmas party on Thursday will be a birthday party for Jesus.  A Room Mother will be contacting people to bring a drink or birthday napkins and cups.

This week has been like Santa's Workshop.  The children are busy doing secret little projects and having a lot of fun doing them.  I have heard more than once, "It's time to go home already?"  

We have been working so hard in Math!  With a lot of practice, everyone is doing so well with double digit subtraction.  I love seeing the pride on the face of a student who just couldn't understand it at first but is now working through the problems with few mistakes.  When working at home remind your child of this alliteration, "If the bottom's bigger, you better borrow!"  Thank you for working on this at home- it makes a big difference in how quickly the concepts are learned.


One of the fun units we do at this time of year is our Christmas Around the World unit.  Both classes join for lessons on different Christmas traditions in other countries.  We have already "visited" Australia and Iceland.  Next week we travel to Mexico, Germany, England, and Spain.  In each country we learn their traditions, locate the country on a map, color the flag, and make a little craft.  I apologize, I failed to have the students bring home their items from this week.  We store them in a ziploc bag and the students' assignment notebooks state they should bring back the bag.  I will send them home on Monday and the bag can be returned on Tuesday. 


We have enjoyed reading books from our Author of the Month, Jan Brett.  This week they fit right in with our reading concept; getting information from illustrations.  Her illustrations are so detailed and interesting, she tells a whole story just in the borders of the pages. 
    You may have noticed a blank page on the weekly reading tests.  Many of the grammar concepts we teach are higher level concepts and are still being taught in 5th grade (like plural possessives).  Dr. Fike agreed that while it is important to model and practice these concepts, assessment can be accomplished by observation and daily practice rather than a formal test. The common core standards place much more emphasis on reading and comprehension skills instead of grammar and we thought our tests should reflect that. Yay!

 As you know, we attended the Nutcracker Ballet this week.  I want you to know that the students were so well behaved.  I was very proud of them.  The students were well prepared for the performance.  Both Mrs. Rahill (our librarian) and I read and discussed the story prior to the event so the students would understand what was going on.  Most of the time the classes sat in rapt attention, taking in the beautiful scenery and dances. Thank you to our wonderful chaperones!

Important Dates:
Dec. 15th - "Sandwich" book reports due
Dec. 17th - Winter concert at 9:40 AM (Students can wear holiday hats and headbands)
Dec. 18th- Class Christmas Party (students are invited to bring in a G rated Christmas movie to show- we will vote on one)
Molinaro pizza lunch in cafeteria with a minimum $3 donation
Dec. 19th- Christmas Mass  at 9AM, then early dismissal.  If you are coming to the mass and would like to take your child home, please send in a note in the morning.
Enjoy your weekend!