Hello Parents! I hope you're having a GREAT week! We are down to 4 Mondays! I cannot believe that! 

Calendar Dates: 

April 26- Spirit Day/ Earth Day

April 30 Back Up Day for Clean Up Day

May 2- Glow Run Lap-A-Thon

May 3- Public School Band Experience/ Spirit Day

May 8-12  Archery Nationals

May 15-  Final Book Report Due/ 5th Mass Day

May 17- 8th grade graduation

May 24-Last Day of School

Glow Run- The kids will have their lap-a-thon on May 2 during their PE time. If they have shorts or T-shirts that glow in the dark have them wear them! Extra fun! They should return their donation papers that went home in their take home folders before May 2. Remember for every $50 they raise, they get a can of Silly String

Reading- This week they read 2 stories. One was on Rita Moreno. She had to deal with a lot of discrimination in her acting and singing career. I did show them a scene of her singing and dancing in West Side Story.  I gave them a short little explanation of that movie. Some wanted to watch it.  Then we read about Louis Armstrong. His story was told from the point of view of his cornet. His start was in New Orleans, but then later moved to Chicago.  We did listen to a couple of his songs. In grammar they are working on adverbs. Words that describe the verb in the sentence. They can answer the questions - how? when? where? and how often? They are trickier because normally the kids want to pick out the verbs. They will test over this story next week. The spelling post test will be on Tuesday, April 30. 

They will need to bring their book report costumes on May 15! 

Math- They are adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators this week.  I have shown them about simplifying, but that isn't our focus just yet. The focus right now is to pick the smallest common denominator and renaming before they can add and subtract. We will also be getting into adding and subtracting mixed numbers! 

Religion- We are working on understanding the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as it pertains to when they get confirmed. We are also talking about the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. We talked a lot about Fortitude (courage) and our saints who became martyrs. They showed lots of courage because they were willing to die for their faith.  We did talk on Tuesday about the 4 steps the Catholic church takes to name someone a saint. 

Spirit Day on Friday! Sweats for $1. It is also Clean Up Day. Bring rakes and gloves! Donate $1 to the school for us to purchase flowers for outside our doors. The rain delay date is set for Tuesday, April 30.

Permission Slips- If you have not returned the permission slip that was sent home last week about going to the public school for band...please do so as soon as possible. Thank you! 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I am heading to Waterloo. My niece Olivia is in her high school's  spring musical so I am going to go watch her perform! 

God Bless,

Miss Surma