Hello Families and Friends!
Here we are at the last week of 2014! It has been amazing to watch just how far the children have come in the past few months. The last week of school will be spent working on a special project that the students will be giving away over the holidays. In many aspects, it is a cumulative effort of many of the things they have been working on since September. I will not go into details here, so as not to ruin the surprise, but know that we will be hard at work each day!
During this time we will also be continuing our stories from the Hebrew Scriptures. We finished up the story of the Exodus of the Hebrew people last week and will be working with the tales of Joshua and Samson. There has been a great deal of writing going on these past four weeks, as we continue to work with punctuation, sentence types, and subject/object. We also created a sequence chain of the story of Moses, helping us summarize and order the events of the narrative. In reading class, many of the students have been practicing writing summaries of the chapters they are reading, as well.
The children are becoming familiar with using the c-flute. We began practicing with the flutes after Thanksgiving and they are already beginning to play Joy to the World. We will be practicing the c-flutes on an almost daily basis for the rest of the year.
This week also holds a number of holiday activities for us. On Wednesday, we have the Advent Spiral during school. It is a beautiful holiday tradition at Urban Prairie and if you would like to participate, there is time available on Wednesday evening. Please see the administrative update for more information. This Friday, the third grade will be celebrating Hanukkah together! We will spend the latter part of the day making latkes, playing with the dreidel, and enjoying each other’s company.
Returning from our break in January, we will begin 2015 with our first shelters block. We will be looking at different kinds of shelters that people make all over the world. It promises to be a really exciting block for everyone! In preparation for this block, I am asking that people save any half gallon milk/OJ cartons and have your child bring them to school. We will be filling them with water, freezing them, and constructing a gigantic igloo. We’ll need a whole lot of them, so every little bit helps!
And a great thank you all for your very thoughtful and generous birthday gift! It was very kind. I am so appreciative to have such a great group of parents to work with.
As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Wishing you all a warm and fantastic week!
Math Homework: 11−6; 13−6; 14−5; 7 x 8; 4 x 6
Spelling Homework: other, about, out, many, these, would, into, has, look, two
Riddle: Two third graders, who were all tangled up in their reckoning of the days of the week, paused on their way to school to straighten matters out. “When the day after tomorrow is yesterday,” said one, “then ‘today’ will be as far from Sunday as that day was which was ‘today’ when the day before yesterday was tomorrow!” On which day of the week did this puzzling prattle occur?