March 27, 2009

Upcoming Dates
* Wednesday, April 1st: March Book-It Reading Logs Due (last one)
Please remember to read everyday for 15 minutes with your child. After March, we will not have the Book-It reading logs anymore, but please continue to read on your own!

* Monday, April 13th to Friday, April 17th: Spring Break
No school! Enjoy your vacation!

* Monday, April 27th: If You Give a Pig a Pancake Field Trip
Attached to this newsletter is the permission slip for our field trip to watch this play at the De Anza Flint Center. We will be going in the morning and will return to Eaton by lunchtime. We are able to bring one parent chaperone. Please return this form by next Friday, April 3rd.

Dear Families,

I can’t believe it’s already the end of March. Time is really going fast! I hope you are enjoying the warm weather and sunshine!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Melissa
Poem of the Week: Spring in the Woods
Song of the Week: Spider or Insect
Kindness is … reading a book to someone special.
Word Wall: build, old, piece, shoe, start, under, very, wear
Next Week’s Sharing: Regular – something recycled
(at least 4 sentences memorized and picture/object to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 7 We Can Work It Out – Week 3
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Question, Fantasy / Realism
• Word Families: words with igh
• Sounds: vowel pairs oo, ew, ue, ou, long I (ie, igh)
• Grammar: Pronouns

• Math: This week we finished our chapter on Measurement. Students should know how to measure length or height in centimeters and inches, and they should know how to compare different capacities and weights. We also spent several days practicing how to solve longer word problems by breaking down each sentence. I am teaching students to read one sentence at a time and write down any numbers or information that may help them. We are still working on addition and subtraction facts to 20.

• Writing: Congratulations to several more authors who finished their Mitten stories this week. We also had several authors finish their first expository Writer’s Workshop piece. Great job! This week, we practiced writing paragraphs as a whole class using colored strips of paper. We have been learning how to outline our writing and to organize our thoughts.

• Circuit: For our weather circuit this week, we went to Mrs. Zankich’s class. She taught us about the water cycle, and we learned about Evaporation, Condensation, and Precipitation. We made a weather wheel and learned about water cycle facts.

• Science: We made a book this week called “The Twelve Days of Spring.” We learned about different plants that bloom in the springtime, and learned a song to match our stories. Also, we had an opportunity this week to walk through the Science Fair. We saw many interesting science experiments and projects by Eaton students. This week, we officially received our new science kits on air and weather. We are starting to talk about air and explore air with different solids such as straws, feathers, balloons, and other solids.

• Social Studies: This week, we talked about why people should help others. We reviewed the golden rule and learned about what happens if we have a helpful heart.

• Computer: We went on Starfall this week to read a St. Patrick’s Day story, as well as other fun stories of our choice.

• Buddies: This week, we saw our fourth grade buddies. Since we didn’t see them last week, we did a St. Patrick’s day book with our big buddies, called “Looking for Gold.” Students had to describe where the leprechaun is looking for gold, using spatial words such as over, under, across, through, and around.

• Art: Mrs. Abada came this week and she returned our clay pots that we made last week. This lesson we used paints and learned about colors and mixing colors.

Have a great weekend!