WEEKLY UPDATE!!!

Dear Families,

Family Night is this Thursday, Feb 11th at starting at 5pm. At 5pm, a chili or hot dog dinner is being sponsored by the Kinder class. Please sign at the front desk and pick up a schedule of the nights events. You may also pay for your meals at the front desk. The price is $3 per dinner. Tickets are on sale all week during drop off and pick up, or you can purchase them from Donna. Yummy baked goods (two) will also be available for sale in the exploratorium for $1. Families are encouraged to come and have dinner with their child's teachers in the classrooms. This is a great time to interact, see how well your children are progressing and to get all of your class questions answered. You don't have to buy a chili dinner to participate. You are welcome to bring a dinner from home. It's important that you and your child take part in this interaction time. For information we'll have an open forum discussion on facilities, fundraising, and other school happenings to begin at 6:15pm sharp upstairs in the Commons Room. You'll need to be there to be kept up to date on the latest on our school. Children will be able to do crafts in the kinder room during the parent meeting. $1 for larger crafts like kaliedescope, pinwheels, bead necklace/bracelet, or 3 monster magnets. There will also be free crafts. Each child can make a free book mark.

What's new in our classroom? I know you are all waiting for the "Wax Museum" to be scheduled. Students are almost done with their biographies and then a little more work on dioramas needs to be done. I'll give you a date as soon as we are almost finished - hopefully by the end of this week. Most of the fictional narratives are being edited or in final draft mode. As they are finished, they will be displayed outside our classroom on the bulletin board. Please take the time to stop and read them as I think you will be surprised at the level of creative ability and writing skills. Go 4th graders!!!

We will be reading chapters 6 &7 this week in By the Great Horn Spoon! Students have been learning about the experiences of gold-seekers that traveled around the Horn in South America. They have been locating places from the story on the map, answering comprehension questions, drawing pictures, and finding locations based on longitude and latitude. This week they will write about the life of miners. After we finish this particular book, we will no longer be reading as a whole group. I will be reading with small groups so I can serve the needs of students at their reading levels.

In math, we are starting to learn about decimals. Last week, students looked at money and the decimals in money, we placed decimals on number lines, looked at a hundreds chart and how decimals relate, and looked at the relationship between thousands, hundreds, tens, ones, tenths, hundredths, and thousanths. This week I will be using Base 10 to further support learning about decimals and we will just begin to compare decimals to fractions.

On Tuesday of this week, I have scheduled with an artist to come in at 1pm to begin teaching the students to oil paint. Thank you to all the parents who brought canvasses and other supplies into the classroom so that your children have the wonderful opportunity to learn from a professional artist. We will be painting the California poppy.

On Thursday, we will be starting science and beginning to look at crystals and rocks. Yippee!

In history, along with reading, By the Great Horn Spoon, we recently read about the Mexican-American War, which is so important in California's statehood. We also had our wonderful field trip up to Julian to visit Smith's ranch where Mr. Smith was a well-informed resource for the time period in history we are studying. Through him we also had the opportunity to see a primary source document. That spurred a conversation in the classroom about primary and secondary resources in research. Thanks to all of the parents that drove to Julian. Stopping on the way back to touch snow and have snow-ball fights was another highlight of our trip.

I want to mention a special thanks to Leisa Mitchell who donated book bags to all 4th graders and also to Cheryl Geck for modifying the bags so they can actually hang on the back of the chairs. I like the desks to look uncluttered.

I will be sending home some unfinished work with students this week. In some cases students have had as much as two weeks to turn in some work and still have not. When it comes home, if you could have your child finish the work as soon as possible and return it to me, I would appreciate it.

That's it for now!

Kim