Hello Parents, Happy Wednesday! I hope you're having a great week! The temperatures make me think of January. I'm not ready for this! 

Religion- We are wrapping up our last mystery of the rosary. They are working on the Sorrowful Mysteries. The sad ones. We will be back in the book and then we are going to focus on the Beatitudes. 

Math- This week we have done some review, but also started working on compatible numbers to estimate. The kids don't really round to do this. They have to find compatible numbers so they don't end up with a remainder. So if they are dividing 562 by 23. They would change 23 to 20 and then think what is close to that 5 and it works with 2s. They might choose to divide 400 by 20 or 600 by 20. Either answer will work out perfectly! We just started this today. For some the concept comes easily, for others it does not. We will be working on more of this tomorrow. 

Reading- We are in our last story of this unit. This week's story is called Cougars.  That is exactly what it is about as well. This one is an informational article that they would find maybe in a science book. They learn different facts about cougars. How there fur helps them. How the mothers take care of them. They say that cougars leave their moms at about 18 months old. I asked them, "Can you imagine leaving your house at that age?" We also learned that their sight is their strongest sense. Cougars also go by different names depending on where they live.  Our grammar this week is working with quotation marks. We have done most of that together. Today I gave them some graph paper and they had to create a wordsearch with their spelling words. Tomorrow they will trade papers and have to find the 20 words in someone else's puzzle. They will test on Friday. Next week we will not begin our unit test. I will have them doing other things. When they get back from Thanksgiving break we will do the unit test. 

I loved all the book reports! They did a great job on their projects! So many different ones-- that was an extra perk! 

Geography Bee- Next week we will do the first round. We do that in the classrooms in the upper wing. The top 10 from that round will go to the next round. We usually do that in December. That is the one you will be invited to come watch. This is for kids in grades 4-8. 

Mass- The 5th graders will be in charge of mass on November 28-- the week after Thanksgiving. I will give them their parts next week. 

St. Malachy Vendor Fair- This Saturday in the gym! Get some Christmas shopping done early! 😄

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I am heading back to UNI. They are hosting educators at the football game on Saturday night. I received free tickets in the mail. My sister and sister-in-law are also teachers who graduated from UNI-- we all got tickets! It will be fun to be back in the Dome watching the Panthers! 
God Bless,
Miss Surma