December 15

Upcoming Dates/Reminders:

• Next week we will not have word work due to the many Christmas activities.  I will be spending time next week reassessing your children in spelling.  
• We will still complete Math homework (due Friday). 
• I will send reading minutes this coming week but only 75 minutes are due.  I will have the kids turn this in on Friday (Dec. 22) so that you do not need to keep track of any papers over Christmas break.  
• December 20 (Wednesday)- Positive options will come for our chapel (10:20-10:45) and receive the baby items that we have gathered for them.  Our class has collected 71 items so far.  Thank you for your generosity!
• December 20 (Wednesday)- Our class will be reading Christmas stories with the 6th graders.  Please have your child bring in his/her favorite Christmas book to partner read with a friend!
• December 21 (Thursday)- We will have our class Christmas party in the afternoon from 2:15-3:00.  Thank you to Peggy Gorno, Kerri DeVries, Sara Knoester, and Sue Stock for planning this event for the kids.  We could use two more volunteers for the games, so if you would like to attend please send me an email and let me know.  
• December 22 (Friday)- We will be at the middle school from 8:45-10:30 or so to play math games that the 7th graders have created!  
• December 23-January 7- Christmas Break
• January 8 (Monday)- Class resumes
• Gingerbread house board- If your child is done with their gingerbread house, will you please return the board to school?  We will reuse these again next year.

Curriculum Highlights:

Bible:  Luke 2:6-20 is due on Friday, December 22.  We have been practicing in class each day and many students have this memorized.  I will have students say it to me by Friday if they have not turned in their slip from home.  In class we continue to study Jacob and his marriages to Leah and Rachel.  This week we talked about how Jacob deceived others but we also saw how he was deceived by Laban.  Through it all we talk about how God uses those we least expect to bring forth His salvation plan.

Math:  We have wrapped up studying elapsed time and taken this portion of our math test.  We have now begun reading and creating pictographs and bar graphs with multi-digit numbers.  My goal is to wrap up this unit next week.  

Literacy:  We are reading Caleb's Story in class and enjoying a whole group book discussion.  Each student has also written the "evidence" of his/her personal essay by creating two examples to support the big idea.  We also crafted an introduction and conclusion this week.  This is a tough concept but everyone is doing a really nice job!  Next week we will edit our work and then begin our final copies. 

Social Studies:  We have wrapped up our geography of Michigan unit by studying different regions in Michigan.  Next week we will put the final touches on our Michigan books that we created on our ipads.  

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynae