Dear Parents, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! The weather sure didn't make it feel like Christmas...not that I am complaining! I had a great time with my family in Waterloo. It is fun watching my nieces and nephews who are now getting older.  I also spent a couple of days in Branson with Mrs. Sickels and her mom. That was a fun getaway too. 

Wanted: New Servers for Mass at Holy Spirit

Server Training at Holy Spirit

As the new year beginnings, we have some new changes during Mass. There will be server training to help students learn the new change on Sat., Jan. 11 and Jan. 18 after Mass and on Sun., Jan. 12 and Jan. 19 before Mass starting at 8:30 a.m. All new and experienced servers need to attend the training.

The gang is back together! All 13-5th graders were here on Monday! Everyone was very excited to see and talk to Sadie! 

Last week, I assigned them a new writing project. This is more informative. They had to look through 3 websites I gave them and choose a person from the Revolutionary War. This is a mini biography project they are doing. This will help them out when they do the real one for their book report in May. These people go along with our unit in reading right now. Right now they are taking notes on their people. We are going to talk about how to write this paper on another day, probably this week. Their rough draft will be due on Jan. 24. That one can be typed or hand written. I am leaving that up to them.

Last week they shared their Harris Burrdick stories with the class. I will be sending those home so you can read them. I hope you have them explain the basis behind them. They come from a book called The Mysteries of Harris Burrdick by Chris Van Allsburg. He is the author of Polar Express.

Last Thursday, I sent home a slip asking for volunteers for our kick off mass for CSW on Jan. 26. Please return as soon as possible if your child is going to help out! Thanks so much! 

Reading- This week we are reading a story called Molly Pitcher. She is really named Mary Hays, but she got the name Molly Pitcher during the war. She was on the battlefield at Monmouth with her husband. She would run water in a pitcher to the men fighting because it was such a hot humid summer day. She actually took over at a cannon after her husband had been injured. General Washington actually named her a Sergeant for her work and bravery. In grammar, we are working on regular and irregular verbs. They are learning how some verbs can change a tense by adding a -d or -ed. Other verbs have to change the entire word for example-- go becomes went. If a verb ends in a consonant and a -y, then they have to change the y to an i and add -ed. This is also the third story in this unit which means that on Friday's test there will be a cold read section for them to do as well. 

Math- We have been learning to estimate decimals. They learned to round them to the nearest whole number which is the number in the ones place. They also learned to look at the decimal and get it to the nearest benchmark number. Those numbers are 0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75. and 1.00. So if the number is 2.03-- they would say 2.00, if it was 2.18 they would change it to 2.75.  If it were 3.89 they would change it to 4.00. They are also adding and subtracting decimals. The two problems I have come across are that they don't always pay attention the sign. Some of them add when they are supposed to subtract.  The other issue is when they are subtracting... 17.00-8.45. They forget they need to do some borrowing. Some of the kids would write 9.45 as their answer. Our chapter will be done next week. They will probably be testing towards the end of next week. 

Religion- We started a new chapter this week. Right now they are creating groups that would be like an after school group for fun. They have to give themselves a name, have a patron saint, a symbol, and a list of activities they do when they get together. 

Talent Show- This year we are doing a talent show during Catholic School's Week. You might want to talk to you child about it. They are doing tryouts the next two weeks--starting on Tuesday. I am thinking of a class one that we could do as well. 

Heat- So the motor to my classroom heat isn't functioning correctly and is being fixed, but in the mean time our room gets chilly. The kids need to dress appropriately. I told them if they are wearing a t-shirt, to have a sweatshirt along so they could just add that. IF it should get really bad, I will move the class to a vacant room. Luckily, our weather outside has been nice! 

We will be going to work at the Food Pantry on Friday. I see snow in the forecast. They might want their boots on Friday just in case! Friday IS NOT a  Spirit Day.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!
God Bless,
Miss Surma