And this is what it looked like this morning...Yikes!
I also noticed the Yellowstone River finally swelled high enough to break apart the ice chunks. That would have been one heck of an awesome science lesson to watch!
Friday was the Read A Thon assembly. As you can see, our school raised a TON of money for Arrowhead's kids! Check out this total!!!!
That's right! $10, 688 dollars was raised by Arrowhead Eagles! Well done!!! Arrowhead has already ordered four new desktops to finish out the stationary computer lab that we use every Tuesday and Thursday. It will be so nice to have a full set of working computers! Three kiddos get to go on a shopping spree with Mr. Casey for our new nonfiction inquiry books for the library. Inquiry has been scattered with a lack of kid friendly and teacher approved resources. Now, we won't have the problem anymore. Teacher's got a huge say in what topics the books need to be on. What a great way to spend some hard earned cash. Thank you!
Our class had a ton of winners for getting pledges and turning in pledge envelopes. It was fun to keep hearing…from Ms. Erickson's class. Kids will have fun enjoying their gift certificates all over town.
We had a summer birthday in the house on Friday. Happy Summer Birthday Nolan! I hope your real day is as fun as the school one. Thanks for the yummy basketball cupcakes!
This week academically we will...
Math: continue with coordinate graphing and polygons. We will tackle the five specific types of quadrilaterals. We will find missing angles inside triangles and quadrilaterals. We will also look at symmetry, similar, and congruent polygons. Our test on the types of polygons went very well. They all seem to have a firm grasp on what the different polygons are called and how many sides they have.
Lead 21: move onto Unit 6: Nature's Neighborhoods. We will pair this with a fun book about owls, called Owls in the Family. We will take a look at many science skills along with a review of all of our reading strategies. Students will work whole group, with a pair share partner, in their leveled groups, and independently.
Language: finish up comma unit, combine sentences using conjunctions, continue to identify parts of speech, and types of sentences.
Spelling: Alternate testing resumes this week. Book work and words will focus on a VCV (vowel, consonant, vowel) syllable split. Splitting words into syllables is a great strategy to learning how to spell them.
S.S.: We will have a guest speaker (or possibly two) this week. For sure, Mike from Chicago is coming in to talk with the kids. He will connect to the learning we did about Wrigley Field and the great Chicago Fire. Mike is originally from Chicago. He is now part of MCC (Tauzha's Group). He is the one that taught the kids how to play YeeHaw if you remember that joyous code word awhile back. :0) I am also 99% sure that my Zachary and his brother Ricky will be in to talk about how farming has changed from the past to now. This is a perfect tie into the lesson we will do this week on how farming came about, changed over the generations, and why the Midwest is called the Breadbasket of America. Ricky used to teach in Fromberg so he loves working with kids. Zach is as shy as shy can be, so he usually doesn't say a whole lot in large groups, but he usually adds some important tid bits here and there. :0) (One may wonder how he and I are together…opposites attract. And honestly, from day one he has never been shy around me.) They can both also answer any questions the kids have about the ranching videos I shared with them last week and how hard that life can be at times.
Science: Keep working on those science fair projects! Need help? Just ask.
Character Education: Saint Patrick's day. Naughty leprechauns. Oh my!
I will be going to the eye doctor Monday morning. (Sorry Max's dad…I had NO idea that you were one or I would have come to you waaaaaaaaay sooner. Told Max I was willing to fly to Hawaii to see you last week even. How did I not know that???) Finally the glasses will be able to go away again and contacts back on! So, I won't be there when the kids arrive. Mr. Carter will be there to get them check in, do ducks in a row, and then get them to music. If I am not back after that, he will pick them up and do a lesson with them. I will for sure be back by 9:30. I will also be gone on Friday afternoon, as I am going to go back up to Bitterroot to see some old students and enjoy my favorite holiday. I haven't seen them since last year and want to surprise them, leprechaun style. :0)
I told kids that I forgot to remind them that the last day to order books was on Friday. So, I extended the due date to Monday morning. There were a few kids that said they still wanted to order books online. I sure have had fun ordering books for the classroom with the bonus points I have earned from all the books you ordered. Thank you!!! I noticed when I was on the site, that it is now bringing up the March book order form. The one I sent home is the February. So, if kids want one off the order form, they just need to go switch it back to February where it has a drop down menu that says March. Enjoy!
Well, that about covers the upcoming week. I hope that you have a wonderful and warm weekend. I leave you with a picture of Ireland that we can all just sit back and dream about! (Oh…and P.S. don't forget you get one hour less this weekend to spend in dream land. Set those clocks forward one hour tonight. Drats!) Oh…and speaking of Irish, the title of this post is in Irish. If you can figure out what it means in English, write it in the planner for $10 on Monday. :0)
Sweet Dreams,
Ms. Erickson
