Newsletter November 4 - November 8

It is strange that with the extra sleep this weekend that I don't feel rested, but I hope you enjoyed your extra hour and your weekend. Halloween was great!  Thanks to those that helped by sending in a healthy snack that day.

Here are this week's happenings:

• October reading calendars are due by Wednesday, November 6 for a certificate and little treat.
• I was mistaken about the PTA reading awards this Thursday they will be the following Thursday.  PTA bookmarks will be picked up this Friday for those awards. I will send home notices to those that will be receiving awards next week.
• We earned well over the $12,000 goal for our school for the PTA fundraiser (spirit run).  The pajama dance party will be Friday, November 22. I will give you more information when I hear about it. 
• Scholastic book orders will be sent home this week and will be due November 13.  I am sending home both October and November issues since we had the book fair in October I thought that was enough :) Many of the books in the November issue and the Holiday issue would be fun Christmas gifts (hint hint books are great gifts).  If you want to do this I can "hide" them here until you can pick them up.  Just let me know and if your order is for Christmas and I won't send it home with your child when it arrives. 
• Library will be on Wednesday this week instead of our normal Monday time.  
• In our learning we have switched gears in math.  We are now working with geometry concepts.  This unit deals with two-dimensional shapes.  Today we sorted shapes by attributes and learned what vertices are.  This week we will also combine shapes to make new shapes and describe shapes by their attributes.  
• Today we learned about our last body system--the nervous system and completed our body systems booklet.  We will now move onto keeping our bodies healthy.  We'll learn about the food pyramid later this week.
• In reading, we have learned the two sounds for the 'oo' spelling (i.e. soon and book).  In this unit we will also learn to read and spell words with the vowel combinations of 'oi', 'ou', and 'aw' as well as continue to write complete sentences and write narratives. Our next "official" reading test (DIBELS for the middle of the year) will be on December 9.  That is just around the corner.  I'm still overly impressed by how many students return their take home books daily.  The take-home librarian even sent me an e-mail today about that.  THANK YOU!!

Happy Autumn Reading,

Mrs. Armstrong