Weekly Update

These first two days of 2019 were great fun and I was happy to see all of the girls again! Next week, we will get back into our routine and start delving into the curriculum. January and February are always months where we have less distractions and can really work hard.

Pastor Sigmund Collins from Shepherd's Way Relief Center, came to St. Catherine's yesterday and spoke to the fourth grade girls and the boys from St. Chrsitopher's. He had a great message to the students about his vision and talked about what it looks like to show compasssion to those in need. I am very excited for our class to go down to Shepherd's Way this Wednesday to serve breakfast. Thank you for your support of this meaningful project. If you are donating food, please be sure to bring it to my classroom between 2:30 and 4:00 on Tuesday afternoon. I will take the food down ahead of time and they will start warming it Wednesday morning. The girls may wear jeans for this field trip and we will leave school at 8:15 to return by lunch.

Today was a special day because we not only went to see a movie during school, but the girls found out a special message from Mrs. Ivens. Check it out! We had a blast at the movie and the girls were very well behaved.

Reminders and Announcements:

• Shepherd's Way Relief Center information. This letter provides the details and a sign up for food. Please remember to deliver the food on Tuesday afternoon between 2:30 and 4:00 to our classroom.
• The Family Life class will be taught by Nurse Blanton in February. Next Thursday, January 10, she will host a parent information session. Here is the letter from Dr. Kapetanis about this details. 
• From Mrs. Irving: Author Russell Ginns is coming to St. Catherine's School on Monday, January 28th. He is visiting to celebrate both the paperback release of Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans and the upcoming March release of the next book in the series, Samantha Spinner and the Spectacular Specs. bbgb, our local bookshop, is offering the opportunity to purchase autographed copies of Russell's books.
  
  
  Order online to pay with a credit card at  http://bbgbbooks.com/book-buzz/. We are receiving a 15% discount on the books. When ordering online, use coupon code cat15.  Please place your order by Friday, January 18th. Note: the new Samantha Spinner book (Samantha Spinner at the Spectacular Specs) releases on March 12th, so Russell will sign customized book plates during his visit and these books will be delivered to your child's classroom on release day. You may call bbgb with any questions at 804.353.5675.  

• Scavenger Hunt

Happy New Year...almost!

Hi girls!

I hope your break has been amazing! I have enjoyed my break even though I was a bit under the weather for the first week. Thank you so much for the two gift cards from all of you. Mr. Hiscock and I went to Azzurro on Friday and had a delicious dinner!

We have a very short week coming up when we return to school on Thursday! Pastor Collins from Shepherd's Way Relief Center is coming to talk to us and the fourth grade boys from St. Chris on Thursday morning at 9. The boys are walking over to join us. He will talk about his mission and prepare us for our visit there on January 9. On Friday, we will have a field trip to the movies! We leave after lunch and it will be tons of fun! You do need to wear your field trip attire on Friday since we will be off campus.

Here are some reminders for the short week ahead.

• Abby is our carpool helper next week
• Our class will be visiting Shepherd's Way Relief Center on Wednesday, January 9, for a fourth grade outreach project. This letter provides the details and a sign up for food. Thank you for your support!
• Field Trip to Bow-Tie theater on 1/4. Please remember field trip attire. 
• Scavenger Hunt

Weekly Update

We had a fun short week after the beautiful snow that winter storm Diego brought to Richmond! We spent much of our week finishing up an abstract noun project. The girls chose 4-6 abstract nouns that represent the holidays to them and they then wrote a short script using each word. They recorded themselves sharing their scripts, gathered relevant photos, and assembled everything into an Animoto movie. They did a great job and here they are!

Emily	Virginia
Tilden	Katie
Amelia	Abby
Tayloe	Claiborne
Karrington	Selah
Eleanor	Alice
Addisyn	Vivienne
Sloane	Natalie
Juliet	Riley

Next week is all about the Gifts Service. We spent time today looking over the schedule and discussing costumes. Please click here to see costume information.

Here are some reminders for the short week ahead.

• Abby is our carpool helper next week
• Presents are due Monday for our class gift exchange. Please have the presents wrapped!
• Our class will be visiting Shepherd's Way Relief Center on Wednesday, January 9, for a fourth grade outreach project. This letter provides the details and a sign up for food. Thank you for your support!
• Scavenger Hunt

Snow Day!

Girls!

I hope you have a great day off from school tomorrow. Sam, George, and I are excited about all of the snow we have in our yard. Please keep reading in All of a Kind Family...you need to be finished through chapter 9 by Friday. This is your only homework this week!

The other reminder is that your Secret Santa gift is due by Monday, December 17, for our class gift exchange.

Add to this padlet and make sure you read the directions! (Hint: Include your name!)

Weekly Update

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas on our hall. The girls made some beautiful Christmas posters illustrating a favorite holiday memory or Christmas scene. I love seeing them display their creativity. Under each illustration, there are tabs where passersby may take some of what they illustrated. See what I mean in these pictures:

 

We have been busy this week finishing up a variety of projects. For the most part, the girls have finished the interview project with the girls from Mrs. Coughlan's class. They did a great job asking deeper questions of their partner and then writing a detailed paragraph about what they learned. They then made magazine covers about their partner. Here is one example:

In math, we continued to work on fractions, specifically finding equivalent fractions using multiplication and division. We will continue with this fraction unit next week and after the break. The girls are continuing to earn math-a-ments for their personal Christmas trees.

Next week, the only homework the girls will have will be to finish reading through chapter 9 in All of a Kind Family. We will read some in class and they may read at home as well. The goal is to read through chapter 9 by next Friday.

In the event of a snowstorm and no school, I will communicate with the girls through our class blog. 🤞

Reminders and Announcements

• Natalie is our carpool helper next week
• Gifts Service is December 19 - Information here
• Scavenger hunt

Fourthie Christmas Tree!

Weekly Update

We had a great week back after a relaxing and refreshing Thanksgiving break. As we approach the Christmas season, we are getting in the spirit with fun holiday activities. Here are some curriculum updates.

Math: We began the week with a fun problem solving project using the movie Sing. The girls chose three EdPuzzles to solve with video clips from the movie. Here is one that most of them solved.

 
The next part of the project involves the girls writing a song with a partner. The challenge is that they are asked to use some Wordly Wise words in their song. They are really into this project and will perform early next week.
We also jumped into fractions and reviewed the concept of a fraction, numerators and denominators, using pictorial representations. We will continue to work with fractions up to the Christmas break.
On this week's Pick 8, the girls had to solve multi-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. There were many careless mistakes so I encouraged the girls to look back over their work this week. I will be giving them a pop quiz on this computation next week. It will look very similar to this week's Pick 8.
Another fun math project that we started this week was solving problems to earn "Math-a-ments." Each girl has a Christmas tree on the outside of their cubby. In order to decorate it, they must correctly solve a variety of math problems to earn math-a-ments. Coloring and math make a great combination for 9-10 year old girls! Here is one:

Language Arts: The girls did a nice job reflecting on the blessings in their lives with their gratitude journals. These came home today in their Friday folders so I hope you will take a look. We finished our realistic book projects and they made some awesome book trailers using Animoto. Check them out! We are continuing with our class novel, All of a Kind Family, and I hope we will conclude the book by the break. This week, we started a new writing lab that will last for the next few weeks. It started with a partner interview with girls from Mrs. Coughlan's class. We talked about how to phrase a question to encourage a detailed response. The girls had fun interviewing each other and taking notes. Next week the girls will practice their summarizing skills and write about their partner. There's an additional piece to this activity that will place the girls on the cover of a magazine. Stay tuned.

Reminders and Announcements

• Gifts Service is December 19 - more details to follow
• No carpool helpers from our class next week
• Scavenger hunt

• Please consider participating in the Lower School Christmas Service project. Our class has been asked to bring in gifts for a girl age 15 and up.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Reminders

• Carpool helpers for next week are Amelia and Juliet
• Our class will visit the book fair in the library on Wednesday, November 28 from 12:10 - 12:30. Please come meet us there or feel free to send in money with your daughter.
• Scavenger Hunt!!