Friday, March 28, 2014

Report Cards Come Home

Look in your child's papers for the 3rd Quarter Report card.  It is your child's responsibility to ask for your signature on the return form.  Now is a great time to ask your child what they are most proud of and what goals they want to set for the end of the year.


Cardinal Day on Monday

In honor of opening day of baseball, students are invited to wear Cardinal shirts and jeans on Monday.

Europe and the EU

Our next world region to study in Social Studies is Europe and Russia.  Students are learning basic geography in Europe and about supranational cooperation (countries cooperating together in an organization above their own individual governments).  This is the basis of the European Union.


Checking passports

How many zloty's for 1 franc?

Bonjour! 

These exchange rates are so confusing!


Would you like to buy a bumper sticker?
Now we're the EU - no passports or currency exhanges!
We watch a video on World War II to help students
get perspective this time on history and on
the immense task of rebuilding.  Braden M. brought
in a gas mask to show the class.



Friday, March 14, 2014

A Week of Activity

Disabilities Unit
To wrap up Literature, we spent time simulating different disabilites.  On Monday, we conducted a trust walk while blindfolded.   It was amazing to see how difficult everyday tasks were.  On Tuesday, we learned about Learning Disabilites and other disorders including dyslexia, auditory and visual processing, and ADD.









Sparrows Nest by blogger Colleen, edited by Mrs. R.

Mr. Trampe, from the Board of Directors came to talk to our class about our adopted project for chapel offereings.

Sparrow's Nest started about three and a half years ago.  They bought the house in July of 2013.
Sparrows Nest looks for any volunteer opportunities.  The handbook for the workers was published about 2 weeks ago and is awaiting state approval.  Eight people are able to live there under the age of 18 with house parents on site.  Sparrows Nest connects to other resources in the community for counseling.

Sparrows Nest have large events to raise money or get donations.  There is a 5K run in Frontier Park on the Katy Trail for Sparrows Nest to also raise money. See their website for specifics. 


Grandparents' Day
Thanks to all for helping make Grandparents' Day special for the kids.  We hope you enjoyed visiting Zion! Here are a few "slide show" shots from our Radio Drama Rehearsal. 









Saturday, March 8, 2014

Wrapping up 3rd Quarter

Here are a few highlights from the week:

Religion - Wrapped up our study of prophets and kings.  We will finish the quarter with student-choice of OT Bible stories.

Literature - On Thursday, we began a mini-unit on disabilities.  Inspired by our reading from Helen Keller, we simulated deafness in a lip reading activity and began to explore sign language. 

English - Reviewing punctuation and capitalization rules.  Students were amazed at how much more there is to learn about English when we explored exercises at the Grammar Bytes website.

T- Math:  the Fraction S.O.S. - If you follow the SHAPE, OPERATE, SIMPLIFY model, fraction and mixed number operations make sense!!

Grandparents' Day: Practicing a skit in the style of an old-fashioned Radio Drama.  Students are either acting, creating posters, sound effects, music or performing in commercials for the skit for the morning program in the church basement.  We hope many Grandparents and Special Friends can attend.  Students:  if you volunteered to bring in a prop or costume piece, please have it to school as soon as possible.


Auction donation
Please continue to send in items for our coffee basket.  Here's the original list from our room moms with updates:

2 New Coffee Mugs

2 New Travel Mugs

2 Bags of Coffee 1 donated

Non-refrigerated Creamer 1 French Vanilla donated

1 Bag of Disposable Travel Coffee Cups

Starbucks Gift Cards - 1 donated

Bread Company Gift Cards

Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans

Hot Chocolate 1 box Swiss Miss and some specialty individual cocoas donated

Biscotti

* of course a coffee machine would be great too :) 


Please consider attending the auction on April 4.  It's a fun time and a great way to help support the students.

Tissues please!!
We are running low on tissues in our classroom.  If you are able to spare a box, please send one it.  Thanks!