Happy Easter!


Here we are at the end of the 3rd quarter. Only nine weeks of school left and so much too do. We’ve been doing many activities during Lent and now for Holy Week. We read in our religion book that the church teaches us that Catholic should attend Mass on Sundays and holy days because the Mass is the center of the Church’s life. When you do this, you follow the third commandment, “Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.” Every time you go to Mass, you are encouraged to receive Jesus’ Body and Blood in Holy Communion. The Church requires that you do this at least once during the Easter Season. We discussed that it is very important for them to attend Mass on Easter Sunday.

We have been studying about different communities. We read about two Native American Communities. Every student had an assignment to make a replica of the Hopi or Iroquois home. The Iroquois lived in the forest of the northern part of the United States. They used the land around home to build their community. Their houses were called long houses. The Hopi lived in Arizona, the desert land. They build their houses of stone and earth. The houses looked like apartment houses. I am very impressed with the work that many students put into this project. They will be on display in the north entrance this weekend. This is just another reason to come to church Easter Sunday.

Ms. Cleveland, from Northland College did a lesson about the Powhatan People in Social Studies. After reading the chapter the students tasted Three Sisters Succotash that the Powhatan people made. Many students really liked it and asked for the recipe. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
1 cup wild or brown rice
2 cups canned or cooked lima beans (you can substitute any bean)
2 cups canned or cooked corn
1 cup butternut squash cubed
1 cup banana squash cubed
Oil or butter for frying
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan. Add the rice. Reduce heat and cover.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the corn, beans and squash.
3. After 20 minutes, gradually add the corn, beans and squash to the rice. Stir well. Replace cover and simmer for additional 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, sauté garlic and red onion in small frying pan with butter or oil. Sauté until onions are translucent, not until brown.
5. Add the sautéed onion and garlic to the rice during the last 5 minutes.
6. Check rice after to see if done, if not simmer additional 10 minutes.
7. Remove from heat and allow it to cool down before serving.

I’m impressed on how well the students are doing with their multiplication. Keep practicing at home. We are working on division and they are finding out that if they know their multiplication they can do division real easy.

The reading calendars are going really good. As long as they return it Monday or Tuesday they get credit for the week. I will send the April calendar home tomorrow. They can return it on Thursday, April 8th.

Reminder: No school April 2nd – 7th. Return to school Thursday, April 8th. Have a joyous Easter vacation with your children.

It’s been awhile since my last blog. I’m not sure how many people are really reading it, but I’ll keep posting for once a month.

What has been going on? In religion last week we were talking about the Good News, Parables, Messiah and God’s kingdom. Along with the book work we have been discussing about Lent and what Lent means. This week in our book we are reading about making choices, sacrifices, Jesus’ sacrifice, Jesus’ resurrection and the Paschal Mystery. This is a hard topic for the kids to comprehend. If at all possible please try to attend Mass on the weekend so the children understand what Lent is about.

They have a big project going on in Reading. We are doing a Reading Writing Workshop on Animal Research. Each student selected an animal and we have researching that animal. They used the Library to find books, they used and encyclopedia, and they did internet searches. They learned how to take notes, who to organize their notes into a graph, and now how to write a paragraph from their notes. When they are done with their rough drafts, they will begin to type them on the computers. If time allows they will copy and paste animal pictures into their reports. This is a long process but the kids really get a lot out of this. It’s so hard for them because they want to copy information out of the book and write their reports. They are learning that there are many steps to writing a good research report.

They made it through 1 digit multiplication. I’m always so impressed on how well they catch onto multiplication. They have a little trouble with the 6’s, 7’s, and 8’s. I tried to tell them to break them in half and then double the answer. They are starting two digit multiplication. Today was a joy. We did our 45 minute lesson and they wanted to keep trying to catch on. After recess we started again and finally everyone caught on to doing 2-digit long multiplication. Then they thought it was easy. It can be a challenge at first, but I won’t give up. They need to take a deep breath and tell themselves I can do this.

In Language we finish the unit on verbs. We will be starting adjectives and adverbs. I also started doing the daily oral language practice on the board again. They need work on writing complete, correct sentences. No matter how much I stress capitalization and punctuation, I still have several students who forget. This is something every student can use work on, writing sentences. Occasionally dictate a sentence to them and see if they can write it correctly. This is great practice.

In Spelling we are still picking away at our everyday spelling words. Along with that we are leaning suffixes, prefixes, long and short vowels, compound words, double letter sounds, and much, much more.

In Science and Social Studies they just finished up the units. They did the unit reviews and now they are doing the unit test. It looks like they are doing really well. It is a little hard to do the science and social studies test, but I let them use their notes, corrected worksheets, and their books. They are really leaning how to use the index or glossary to look up certain words to find the page they read it on.

We have completed all the lower case cursive letters. I’m really encouraging them to write their lessons in cursive. Many students don’t want to yet because it slows them down. Practice will make them better. During the third quarter I tell them they have to do all their work in cursive. The only hard thing about doing this is that they are not required to use cursive in the upper grades. I still think it’s very important to teach it to them in 3rd grade.

On March 17, 3rd grade will be hosting the Liturgy at 9:00. Please join us if you can.

I’m very happy that the reading calendars are coming back each week. Keep up the reading and math facts.