Happy Thursday Parents! I hope this week has been a good one for you! It seems winter is still here...sigh.

Reading- This week they read an excerpt from The Black Stallion. The piece we read was about the boy trying to tame the horse somewhat so they could work together to survive on the island. I have not read the actual book, but one of the 5th graders said they had read it. We found it kind of odd that the author kept referring to the horse as either the Black stallion or Black.  Maybe if I read the actual book I will learn that Alec gives him a name.?
Our skill this week was filling out the story map on this story. We had to figure out the conflict, characters, setting, and then we went through and picked out major events that led up to the resolution of the story. Giving the spelling test on Monday was kind of fun. I usually try to give them a hint of what kinds of words they are going to be tested over. This week the hint was: words from another language! hee hee   They thought they were going to have to spell foreign languages! The new favorite word was probably :dungarees! 
In grammar they are learning how to correctly punctuate or write titles of things. For example, books, newspaper, magazines, play titles get underlined or they are italicized. Songs, TV shows, poems, short stories get written with quotation marks.

Math- Well, they are really beginning to learn to divide decimals with whole numbers and decimals. The tricky part is remembering to move that decimal in the divisor and dividend before you begin your work. On Wednesday they were learning to add a zero to the dividend if they had a remainder. I told them that usually when dividing decimals you work it out until there is a 0 remainder, but sometimes it will just continue on and on and on. That is the time you usually round to the nearest tenth or hundredth depending on what the question is asking. They didn't have any situations like that to deal with today.  Moving the decimal is a bit harder. I remember having a hard time with that concept when I was their age. 

Religion- They will be having a chapter test on Friday over the Sacraments of Penance and Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick. I plan on doing a chapter over Lent next week. They wrote out their promises this week. Father Halbur did explain to them, which was new to me.  If you have given up something like cake and are eating dinner at a friend's house and they made a cake. You can kindly turn it down, but if they insist--it is okay to have a small piece. If you gave up TV, but are at a friend's house-- you can watch it . It is better to just be polite rather than ask them to shut it off due to your Lenten promise. 

Lenten Angels- We will begin Lenten Angels the week of March 4. Next week we are going to be doing some bullying activities throughout the week as a school. 

Auction-- Thank you for helping out with donations to our auction items. Remember you can still donate if you haven't!!!! 

FYI- I gave up Facebook for Lent. If you need to reach me you will have to call the school or email me. I can no longer message through Facebook since I deactivated my account. 

Have a good weekend! My sister and brother-in-law are bringing my mom to Creston on Saturday. She will be here with me until spring break! I am excited for the company! 
God Bless, Miss Surma