WOW! A second winter break...

Hi Parents and Guardians,

Well it looks like we were in store for a second winter break! Although the week (plus a few extra days) off was nice, we are unfortunately a little behind in our preparations for MSA. The MSA begins on March 9th, which means we have about 3 weeks left of learning to prepare. It is extremely important that your child be here everyday until then in order learn all of the necessary material in reading and math. Please work hard at getting your child to school every day.

Our Valentine's Day party will be this Friday, February 19th. Please DO NOT send your child with any food. I will provide all of the food because I plan to keep it small. In today's Tuesday folder, you will find a pink packet that discusses information about the party. The children should decorate a shoe box, coffee can, or other type of box and bring it in to be used as a Valentine's mailbox. Please read over all of the information in the pink packet. There is also a list of students' names in the class. If you decide to have your child send in Valentine's Day cards, please be sure to have a card for each student in the class.

I know I am a little behind in my posts. I have some pictures of activities that we've been doing in class that I will be posting sometime this week. Please be on the lookout for these!

Hope you enjoyed the week of snow!

Ms. Van Sickle

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...