Week of January 3rd

Happy New Year! I cannot believe it is already 2011. I trust you had a wonderful and relaxing break. I sure did. My husband and I celebrated our one year anniversary and I became an aunt to my third niece (first one on my side). Kyla Leigh Hartz was born on December 17th and I am in LOVE! She is just perfect. I am so excited that her and Finley will be so close in age. I think my parents are more excited that they get two grandbabies this year! Thank you again for your love and support through this amazing time in my life! I love sharing it with your kids as well.

We have accomplished so much this school year already. I am so excited to start the second half of the year with your kids. I am especially excited to get them back into a routine! I want to thank those of you who take the time to read the blog and keep up to date with what we are doing in the class.

This week we are jumping right back into things. The spelling and vocabulary words are on the right side of the blog and Spelling City has been updated. Please remember to practice the spelling and vocabulary words with your kids nightly. As you have noticed from the vocabulary "assessments", the kids are not asked to write out the definitions. They are assessed to see if they understand what the word means and if they can apply it. I would like to see more understanding of these words. I will be having the kids do some word webs with their vocabulary words. This is a good activity that you can do at home with them as well to reinforce the definitions of these words. We may try some different activities in the future as well.

Here is what we are covering this week:

Language Arts:

• fiction/nonfiction
• author's purpose
• comprehension strategy: rereading for understanding
• pronouns

Math:

• addition of 3 or more numbers
• comparison number stories
• data day (using and interpreting data)

Science

• beginning our study of the rock cycle
• continuing our study of Matter

Writing

• We will begin our revision unit of study. The kids have really been looking forward to this unit and I am pretty excited about it as well!

Social Studies

• Australia

**We will also start cursive handwriting. I will send home additional cursive practice sheets when needed. Please make sure that when your child is doing their cursive work that they are sitting up straight and that it is done at a table and not in the car or on their lap. I will not ask that the students write in cursive in class. There is a specific order that the students will learn the letters in order for them to build off of one another. Please try not to work ahead with them on specific letters because we want to make sure that they are learning the proper form in order. Thank you!

**Please also make sure that your child is writing their name on all of their homework as well as writing neatly. The students are still expected to read 20 minutes a night and fill out and send in reading logs when completed.

**Book order fliers will come home tomorrow. The website is up and ready for orders! The orders are due January 21st.
Have a wonderful week!