Welcome Back!

Hello Spring- scroll down below the bookshelf to see our new class pet, the spring frog! Hopefully you had a great off track. We returned SO ready to learn lots of new things. We have just started to study Electricity- our final science unit and are starting off on our Pioneer trek next week in social studies. For guided reading, we are enjoying leveled fantasy books. Please see them on the shelf to the right- you might need to click next at the bottom of the shelf to see your book. We are looking forward to writing our own songs to go with our comprehension. Eventually we will even be filming music videos to showcase them. We are starting to review lots of math concepts- ask a student how to find the product of 2/3 X 1/4. Hopefully he/she can explain it! We've been practicing.

We are continuing to prepare for our CRT testing by working on our deductive reasoning, problem solving and curriculum review. We are also using lots of new technology in our classroom. Our new Smart Board and document camera have been huge hits. The students are fascinated and can't wait to have a turn on them. We are so happy to have many new technologies available to us.

Hopefully we will have nice warm weather for the upcoming spring break. Please remember Wednesday, April 8th is a half day. Enjoy the days off!

Off track

Hi. I hope you are all having a wonderful break. Thank you for all of the well wishes, prayers and good thoughts you all sent my way while I was with my mother. She is recovering well and especially liked the cards the students sent her. It was nice to get to talk with all of you at conferences last week and discuss the progress our fantastic students are making. We had a great final week finishing our study of Heredity, ending our Geometry unit and completing awesome paper dolls to culminate our adventure stories. Hopefully you got a chance to see them while they were in the hall- they were so cool!

Many of the students are well on their way to earning their Coyote Pride awards. While off track they can work on their great brain projects, fitness times, arts projects, study states and capitals, memorize poetry and study their times tables to continue their pursuit of this award.

Please have a safe break. I look forward to seeing you soon!

We had another fantastic week. The kids looked super and acted wonderfully at the Symphony on Tuesday. We are finally getting the hang of adding and subtracting those pesky fractions. We had a lot of fun with our matter experiments and finished our unit with a yummy one. We made ice cream in zip lock bags and got to watch the change in state of the milk. The recipe, as promised- smile Sarah, is as follows:

Ice cream in a bag

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup whole milk
* 1 tablespoon sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 sandwich ziploc bag
* 1 gallon ziploc bag
* 3 cups ice
* 1/3 cup rock salt (table or kosher salt work too- it just takes longer)

Directions

1. Put first 3 ingredients in the smaller Ziplock bag and seal bag (Make
sure it is tightly closed!). Put ice and rock salt in the larger bag and then
add the filled small bag. Seal the large bag.
2. Squeeze bag until ice cream is thickened, about 4-8 minutes.
3. Remove small bag, unseal, and eat with spoon.
4. No need to even dirty a bowl!

Many of them were surprised the ice cream tasted so good =) The students also finished our study of the Constitution with the recitation of the Preamble. Of the 24 students who tested on it 20 knew both the verse and the meaning! WOW! What a great bunch of memories they have.

I will not be in class next Tuesday-Friday. My mother is having some pretty major surgery and I am going to help her and my dad for a few days. Not the best timing I know but I don't think we ever really plan for things like this. The class will be in very good hands. Miss Forsythe from the 4th grade will be our sub for Tuesday and Wednesday and Mrs. Buttars will take over for Thursday and Friday. The Valentine's party will be covered by our wonderful room moms. If you would like to help please contact Mrs. Dunbar. Thank you to all of the students who have made get well cards. It was very sweet of them to do so and I am sure my mom will love them.

Take care and have a great St. Valentine's Day

Wow. What a great break we had. We posted over 17,000 reading minutes when we returned to the school. Very impressive indeed! We are currently studying matter, adding and subtracting of fractions and the US Constitution. We have also been enjoying our adventure themed reading books and writing lots of amazing essays. We have been using the laptops from our Engaged Classroom grant and are looking forward to using the video camera in the coming weeks.

Progress notices went home this week- commonly called printouts by the students and all late work for this term is due February 20th. We will have SEP conferences the first week in March. We have a couple of special events coming up. First, we will be going to the Symphony next week. We are looking forward to hearing the music of John Williams and many other composers. Secondly, we will have a special guest visiting on Feb. 9. We will be participating in activities designed to give students a better understanding of the different abilities we all have. We are in need of 5 parent volunteers this day from 10-12. Please e-mail or call if you will be able to join us.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog and stay warm!

Wow, it's Christmas time already. We are so excited to be off track. We had an amazing experience with JA Biztown. We learned SO much. Ask students from our class how much money they made? It was so interesting to see them actually running the city for the day. The teachers believe it was so valuable we have already booked next year and we had parents who have requested to go with us even though they will not have students in our grade!

I often get asked for Christmas ideas so I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity. Authorpalooza will be taking place at our local Barnes & Noble this Saturday. This is a great opportunity to go and meet authors and purchase books. The authors will be signing books as well. Many of the authors showcased have visited our school in the past.

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year.