Holiday Sing-A-Long

On the Friday before break, Mr. Welfle put on the annual Winter Sing-A-Long. As a special holiday gift, Ms. Van Sickle bought and personalized Santa and Elf hats for the students to wear to the Sing-A-Long. They really loved wearing the hats all day long!

Neal's 5th grade Orchestra performed some holiday tunes.

Then Neal's 5th grade Band performed.

Finally, the 5th grade Chorus peformed.

The lyrics to "The 12 Days of Winter" song, sung to the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas." We ALL had fun singing this song! :)

Making Snowman out of Socks

On Thursday, we read a few stories about snowmen then had the opportunity to make some snowmen of our own. We followed directions step-by-step in order to create these snowmen. The snowmen were made out of tube socks, rice, and cotton filling. They turned out very cute!

Holidays Around the World

To celebrate the upcoming winter holidays, the third grade students participated in an event called "Holidays Around the World." Each third grade class "traveled" around the world (i.e. to the different third grade classes) to see how different countries celebrate the holidays. Check out the pictures below to see just what the students learned about...

The first stop was Mexico in Ms. Van Sickle's room. The students learned how Mexicans celebrate Christmas and then were able to sing "Feliz Navidad" and drink some Mexican hot chocolate (hot chocolate with cinnamon).
YUM! The cups are empty so it must have been good!

Singing "Feliz Navidad."

The next stop was Japan in Mrs. Rison's room. The students learned about Boy's and Girl's Day, which is a holiday in Japan. Here the students are making Japanese kites.

The next stop was Germany in Mrs. Verras' room. Here the students learned about a German Christmas and got to make Christmas trees out of paper plates.

The final stop was Israel in Mrs. Gervais' room. The students learned about Hanukkah and got to play the dreidel game. They were so busy playing the game, they didn't get the chance to take pictures!

Understanding Division

In order to begin understanding division, we did an activity where we pretended we were handing cookies out to friends. The worksheet represents friends' plates and the individual pieces are cookies. We had 24 cookies to pass out to 2 friends, then to 3 friends, then to 4 friends, and then to 6 friends. We actually put the cookies onto the plates to find how many each friend would get each time.

Spirit Day #3- Mix and Match Day

For Spirit Day #3, students and staff were encouraged to come to school in their craziest outfits for mix and match day. We were told to pair stripes with dots, shoes with sandals, and skirts with pants. Look at how mix-matchy we all are!

Making Apple Dumplings!

On the day before Thanksgiving break, we did a second type of functional reading activity: reading and understanding recipes. We followed the directions on a recipe to prepare and bake our own apple dumplings. We then looked at a different recipe for apple dumplings and compared the text features to decide which recipe was easier to understand.

Ms. Van Sickle helps a student with her dumpling.

Putting some cinnamon sugar into the dumplings.

Putting apples into the dumplings.

Don't forget to load up on the cinnamon sugar! :)

Helping to "enclose" the apples inside with a second piece of pie crust.

FINALLY! The part we've been waiting for... eating the baked apple dumplings!

Happy faces all around!

The look of someone enjoying his food...

Giving Old Crayons a New Life

We tested our reading skills even further by performing a "functional reading" task. Functional reading is reading to perform a task. We read a non-fiction piece of information telling about the history of crayons. Then we followed directions to create sun catchers out of crayon shavings.

Making crayon shavings on top of wax paper.

Then we ironed the crayon shavings inside the wax paper and it made the wax melt and the colors bleed together.

How pretty in our windows for fall!

...even though it was rainy that day!

Polar Bear Plunge

Hello Parents/Guardians,

As I'm sure you've probably seen on the Y-ties information letter that went home a few weeks ago, I am co-chairing the "Shiver in the River" committee this year at Neal. This committee plans and organizes events to raise awareness for Maryland Special Olympics. One way we do this is by participating in the Maryland State Police's Annual Polar Bear Plunge. Since I'm co-chairing this committee, I also plan to participate in the event. Each participant is required to raise at least $50 for the event. Although the fundraisers we are planning at the school will probably cover the $50 for each participant, it would be great to raise more money for such a great cause. If you would like to help sponsor me in participating in the plunge, please visit my website at http://plungemd.kintera.org/vansickle Thanks for your help with such a great cause!

Ms. Van Sickle

Weekly Reminders!

Well, we're finally having a full week this week! We've got lots of things to do in preparation for Thanksgiving Break next week. Tomorrow, November 17, from 9-9:30 is "Poems for Parents." Please sign in at the main office and go to the cafeteria if you RSVP'ed to this event. We will be having our monthly town meeting with Mrs. Leveillee, Mrs. Manzano-Lee, and Mrs. Cavanaugh in the cafeteria on Wednesday, November 18. At these meetings, we discuss many important things going on in the school. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to e-mail me at lvansickle@ccboe.com.

Spirit Day #2- Country/Western Day

This was our second spirit day of the year. Students and staff were encouraged to dress like a cowboy or cowgirl in their country/western gear. Many students came equipped with cowboy hats, boots, pigtails, and fringe. Yee-haw!

Gingerbread Cookie Arrays

In Math class today, we put our knowledge of multiplication to the test! We started learning about arrays yesterday, which are rows and columns of dots that help us to learn different multiplication facts. Today we were given a sheet of 24 gingerbread men pictures and this challenge: "Ms. Van Sickle has to bake 24 cookies. She wants to arrange them on a cookie sheet. What are the different ways that the cookies could be arranged on the sheet in rows and columns? Arrange your cookies in as many different ways that have equal columns or rows."

This student found that she could arrange them in a 2 x 12 formation.

This student is working on the 4 x 6 formation.

We were challenged through trial and error. Not every formation ended in equal amounts of rows and columns.