Week 21

Greetings in the New Year!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and joyous start to the new year. Before I recap just a few enrichment activities that we did to end our school year, I want to remind you that there will only be three days of school this week. Thursday and Friday will be teacher in-service and work days. Also, I will only be sending home two days of homework to start off the second semester, and there will not be a spelling test this week. We will study the same unit words next week when there is a full week to cover all the lessons.

The week before break was full of special activities. In Social Studies, we had been studying about the reasons behind the American Revolution and did an activity simulating the taking of taxes from the colonists using Skittles. The students were not happy when the King kept demanding more taxes and their supply of goodies was quickly being depleted.

The class also had a visit from the school counselor, as we continue to address the issue of bullying. This is something that we will continue into the next semester.

There were also a lot of preparations for Christmas. The students made cards to go along with their gifts, and made paper to wrap presents.

In reading, the class compared the traditional story of the Gingerbread Man to the fractured fairy tale about the Gingerbread Baby. To go along with each story they made gingerbread cookies, and a gingerbread house made from gram crackers.

The students were challenged to build a gingerbread house, as at the end of the Gingerbread Baby he is caught in a gingerbread house instead of being eaten by the fox.

There were many other things happening that last week, such as the Christmas program and class party. Unfortunately, I was too engaged with the students to capture the events on camera. Thank you to all of you that sent food in for the party.

Enjoy the longer days and have a great week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown