Good morning everyone! Hope you all are doing well. Hard to believe we only have two more weeks till our first quarter comes to an end! What are your plans this weekend? I already gave myself a haircut and donated blood this morning. The rest of my day is pretty busy. I plan to finish this blog, do some grading, lesson planning, grocery shopping, and laundry! Plus, we painted over the summer, but never got the family photos hung back up; so that's also on my list of things to do today. Work has got me so busy during the week, that I never seem to have time for the basic things around here. Oh, and tonight, my sister and her family are coming over and we're going to attempt our first ever gyro meat recipe! I hope it turns out; keep your fingers crossed. 

Thank you for getting everyone to school on time on Tuesday for the Galileo testing. I think it worked very well having our DL online with us, so we could answer any questions with logging in and things like that. On behalf of all three classes, I wanted to say thank you for the donations that are coming in. I'm pretty sure we each have a wish list, and we certainly appreciate any and all items that have been purchased. 

Let's take a look at what we're doing this first full week.

Language Arts

    Poetry - We're learning "Ozymandius" and we've decided to extend the due date to Wed., Sept. 30th. The children are always welcome to recite earlier, but that will be the latest date for recitations.

     Grammar - We're going to focus our lessons this week on tricky homophones since the students will be writing their first big writing assignment soon.

     Composition - We will have a graded summary this week, as well as some practice with writing a good paragraph.

     Literature - We've enjoyed our introduction into Pollyanna. She is quite a character! Because we got off to a slow start this year, we will be reading two chapers a day to fnish up the book before the quarter ends.

Math - We will start Unit 2 on Monday. This unit is really just more practice with the four operations with numbers up to a million. We will practice mental math skills and estimation, as well as working on more word problems and honing our model-drawing skills.

Science - We are going to have our Chemistry Comprehension Check on Monday. The kids are expected to understand the big ideas of this unit. What is matter? They should be able to write about it, knowing these terms: atoms, elements, compounds, molecules, mass, volume, and density. Also they should know the difference between physical and chemical changes. 

Then we will begin our unit on magnetism and electricity; the kids will LOVE it! I hope you at home can find some magnets to explore with. This is a unit with a lot of hands-on activities.

History - The children know how the Western Roman Empire fell, and now they'll learn how the Middle Ages began.

That's about it. Enjoy your weekend and your amazing 4th graders!