Wow! Here we are at the end of October and Thanksgiving just around the corner. Next Tuesday, Nov. 2 will be the end of first quarter. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been here for nine weeks. The students are doing great and we’re moving along at a nice pace. Before we know it, January will be here.

We had our week long testing and I was very proud of this group. They all worked really hard. It was nice they had a break in the morning and the afternoon with specialist or a snack break. Thanks to all the parents that donated snacks during that week. Not all parents were called. Your time will come when you will be called to donate something, so don’t fell left out.

So what has been going on since last month? In math we’ve been working hard with addition. Some students have really come along way with learning their addition math facts. Friday, tomorrow, we will do our last 2 minute time math facts quiz. We will start subtraction next. Have the students start learning their subtraction math facts. Remember to practice every night for 10 minutes. This last week we have been doing subtraction with regrouping and without grouping. Some students forgot how to subtract when they had to regroup, but I think they are all back on the right track.

Now that we’ve finished learning what a sentence is, we started working on nouns in a sentence. We learned what common and proper nouns are. Some still have trouble remembering to use capital letters for proper nouns. We will begin working with plural and singular nouns.

We had our first Liturgy that we planned on Wednesday and everyone did a great job. Thank you 4th grade for singing with us. They were all rewarded with donuts.

I’m beginning a unit on bullying. I have a few videos order from the Bishop Hammes Media Center on bullying. I found some role playing skits that I would like the students to act out. The three play are called Masks, (everyone is different); Let Me Play (let other students play/taking turns); and Scrabble, (sharing/working together). If they do really well with the skits I would like them to present them to the younger grades.

I was very impressed with the frog dioramas. The students take great pride in doing these projects. We are done with the life cycle unit now.

We will begin learning all about plants. Does anyone have 12 baby spider plants they would like to donate to use? We do different activities with the plants.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!!