Dear families, as we get closer to Christmas and it gets colder outside, we have been keeping warm and busy inside Room 117. Our first hour math classes each day just speed by with our current work with decimal numbers. We all hope to be able to finish Unit 4 by the end of next week, tentatively planning the unit test on Monday, December 19th. That gives us a chance to wrap up all our work with these lessons before our Winter Break, and start fresh with Unit 5 upon returning in January.
In social studies, the Wisconsin maps have been unfurled, the dozen brand new globes from our school library have been rotating, and we are digging into our new social studies books to become familiar with landmarks all over the world, and particularly our state of Wisconsin. The concepts of latitude and longitude, equator and prime meridian, map legends, and compass rose directions have given us a chance to literally tour the world with our fingertips, and discussions have been lively. Soon we will be ready to create our own maps, and we can't wait.
We practiced descriptive sentence writing in our study of homonyms for spelling over the last week. That test has been taken, and next week we will have a list of holiday words to practice. Today we began writing some fantasy holiday stories in our continuing quest to become so descriptive that our stories play like movies in our heads. This morning we all attended the annual West Middleton Spelling Bee, and our four representatives (Cecilie, Buddy, Karsey, and Seth) did an outstanding job with some very tricky words. We are so proud of them! This week also included the beginning rounds in our classrooms for the annual Geography Bee as well! After seven preliminary rounds in each classroom, our GT teacher, Ms. Weber, will take everyone's resulting scores, and further narrow down the field of representatives. Stay tuned for more information about this endeavor in January.
Report cards came home today in white envelopes. These envelopes have a 'First Trimester' line where parents can sign, and then one day next week, would you please send these envelopes and report cards back to school? Thank you! It was fun to see many of our families at the Winter Tea on Wednesday. I got some very nice pictures to add to our classroom photo album, and will share copies with you as well. I should add that today was another photo 'opportunity'. In our celebration of taking first place in the West Middleton Box Tops Contest, we will now have some shots of Mrs. Hannam and Mr. Rykal covered in cream pie!! I randomly drew a name from our classroom name container to see who would be the 'pie thrower', and out came "Buddy L" !! He did a thorough job, I must say :), and it was loads of (goopy) fun. Our class also gets to look forward to a complete pizza party, compliments of the WM PTO, in January! Yay for us!!
Planning for our holiday classroom party on Wednesday afternoon, December 21, has begun, thanks to Beth Graf, Mary Hoferle, and Jane MacLean. If you have any ideas for an activity or want to send in a treat to add to the fun, just let one of them know - and many thanks from all of us!! I just cannot believe we are at this point in the school year already! We are working hard, but enjoying what we do together everyday, and the weeks are just flying by! It is such a privilege to work with your fourth graders! Most sincerely, Melanie
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