Good morning! I am a little late getting started because I woke up and cleaned the fridge in the garage, which was not a job for the feint of heart! 😬 I may tackle the kitchen fridge later today, but I also want to make some chili and some homemade beef jerky, plus I need to return to the upstairs to do some more cleaning. We didn't make a very big dent last weekend I'm afraid. My food prep is for the upcoming weekend; Rita and 6 of her friends are making their second annual camping trip. Last year I was committed to a 4th grade team-building event, so I couldn't make it. I am happy to be going along this year, although I would have liked to attend the GH Gala (I"ll do better next year with my calendar!). I'm really happy that the teachers actually have a half day on Friday, so we get to head up the mountain midday! Seven Sophomores camping on the Rim...should be a good time, especially if you like giggling and squealing.
As you can see, this weekend is not too exciting. I have grading to do, of course, but I also need to find a new team-building or stem activity for the kingdoms' groups to do this quarter. I thought I had been organizing these long enough to start recycling my ideas, but alas, I still have another year to go! It's not easy finding activities that Kinders can do along with 5th graders! Oh, and then I have to iron some shirts. Somehow I've managed to purchase a few items that weirdly don't unwrinkle when you wash and dry them. This is super annoying, since that's really my "go-to" method of "ironing". I'll iron them this one time and then we'll see if they are worthy of remaining in my closet. It may be a may-or-break deal.
Let's take a look at our week ahead.
Language Arts -
Grammar - We'll put a pause on learning more parts of speech while we focus on our first essay. All the essays the fourth graders write are 5-paragraph essays. We worked on answering prompts yesterday, and will have some homework related to those topic sentences on Monday. We will practice writing an introductory paragraph together, as well as compose a quick essay on St. Benedict this week in class(we read about him in history). Then on Thursday or Friday, the kids will start their essays on Charlemagne, one of the greatest rulers of the Middle Ages.
Literature - We'll read chapters 16-23 this week. Thank you to everyone who came out to read with the kids on Wednesday! They had a great time getting into smaller groups to read and discuss Pollyanna with you!
Poetry - Our last poem of the quarter will be recited on Friday, if not sooner. I've heard quite a few already from my class, and I must say the kids are doing a fantastic job!
Philosophy - We will discuss what it means to be a good citizen this week.
Math - We have been working on multiplication with numbers in the thousands and we'll be dividing 4-digit numbers this week. The tricky part of this week will be estimation with division. They need to find the nearest multiple of the divisor when rounding the dividend, instead of following the regular rounding rules. We'll try to give them plenty of practice. Our unit assessment will be a week from Monday.
Science - We've had a blast exploring and discovering things with magnets this week. Yesterday, the kids played in sand with magnets and found iron filings in it. Many thought that we put them there for them to find, but it really was just sand from a park playground. This week, we'll find out if there's really iron in cereal. If there is, does it look the same as the iron they found in the sand?
History - The students will work on integrating information from several texts about Charlemagne as they write notes to help them prepare for their essays.
That's it! Thanks for raising such great kids for us to hang out with all day! Enjoy your weekend!