Hello Parents, I hope everyone had a great weekend, minus the wind of course! I was in a wind warning back home on Saturday. I saw and drove through a few dust storms. I counted 4 overturned semis and 1 camper on its top driving back on Sunday on I-80! Scary!!!

May 4- 4th grade mass

May 5-Lap-A-Thon

May 8- Mother's Day

May 18- Book Report Due

May 20- 8th grade graduation

May 25- Spring Concert

May 26- Last Day of School

Elk's Track Meet- In your child's folder last week was a form for you to fill out for the Elk's Track meet. This is voluntary, not required. It has been a long time since we have participated in it! I am glad to see it back! If your child wants to participate, just fill out the form and have them fill it out and return it to Mr. McCabe. I hope some of them participate! It gives them just a little taste of being out for track! 

Lap-A-Thon- Don't forget to get your donations filled out for the lap-a-thon! The kids will run during their PE time on Thursday, May 5. Spraying Mr. McCabe with Silly String sounds fun too! 

Reading- This week they are reading a nonfiction piece called Vaqueros. It is the history of cowboys in America and Mexico. We read that it was illegal for the Natives to ride horses back then, but then some were taught how because they were needed on the cattle drives. The grammar this week is about easily confused verbs...words like can/may, rise/raise, teach/learn, sit/set and lie/lay. I think when we went over lie/lay- many of them had this awakening and realized they have been saying it wrong for so long! I will lay these books on the desk. I am going to go lie on my bed. (That is the correct form!)  I gave them a couple of lists they can use on their assignments and on their Friday test.

Book Report Projects will be due three weeks from Wednesday, April 27. 

Flowers- I don't know if you read Jennifer's blog the last couple of weeks, but in her post about clean up day, she asked every child to donate $1 for the flowers the school would plant outside for the summer. I had 2 kids donate last week. 

Religion- We are done with our Easter chapter. We are now working on the Spiritual Works of Mercy. Next week, we will start working in our Guidance books during religion class. We won't do it every day. It goes along with our religion program,but it's more about our relationships with our parents, siblings, friends, etc. 

Math- This week they learned to find the common denominator for fractions. The next step was then adding fractions with unlike denominators. That threw some of them off! On Wednesday, we started subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. Right now I am letting them keep their answers as improper fractions in simplified form. Baby steps. Next week I am going to teach them how to change that improper fraction into a mixed number and vice versa. That step takes some practice.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I am heading to Waterloo again. My niece Olivia is in her high school's musical Grease! That will be fun to watch! 

God Bless,

Miss Surma