Week of 12/15 Newsletter

Dear 4th & 5th Grade Families,

Winter break is right around the corner! I wish you all a very happy holiday season! 

Just a reminder, there will be no school this Friday, 12/18. On Thursday, parents and family are welcome to join us for the Holiday Sing at 11AM to enjoy the songs and ukulele playing by our students! 

We will be celebrating the November and December birthdays at the end of the day, Thursday, with hot cocoa and a treat or two. If you're able to donate a box of hot cocoa, please do so by Wednesday morning. 

This week we will be finishing up Sign of the Beaver and (hopefully) writing a book review. We will also be launching Accelerated Reader (please see the attached letter here with details).

In math, we finished up a unit on pre-algebra called "Changes in Quantities." It was very challenging and everyone worked very hard to understand it. I am so impressed by the perseverance and dedication to problem solving in our class! We will begin to work with fraction this week to prepare for a fractions unit in January. Please check out the standards if you are curious about what your child will be learning (4th Grade Standards or 5th Grade Standards). I hope to make it fun and hands on, as much as possible, to give your child a solid foundation in understanding and computing with fractions.

Thank you, as always, for your support both in class and at home! The weekly parent volunteers and incredibly invaluable and I truly appreciate the time taken to work with our students! If you have any questions or concerns, please email me at rhonig@mountainesd.org.

Warmly,

Mrs. Honig

PS: My husband and I are very excited to share with you that we will be expecting a baby boy in early June, 2015! More details will follow in the coming months regarding this happy news. 

Week of 12/8 Newsletter

Dear Families,

We have several upcoming events scheduled before Winter Break:

Holiday Night, Wednesday, 12/10 from 6-8:30PM

Banana Slug String Quartet - Watershed Education, Tuesday, 12/16 at 11:15AM

Holiday Sing, Thursday, 12/18 at 11AM

4/5 Hot Cocoa Winter Birthday Celebration,  Thursday, 12/18 at 2:00 Please send your child to school with a reusable mug and we'll have hot cocoa with marshmallows and celebrate the November and December Birthdays. If you're able to donate a box of hot cocoa mix, please send it in by the end of the week.

What We're Learning This Week:

ELA/Social Sciences:
We have begun to learn about the Colonies and will focus on the geographical features that affected settlements. Students will focus on fine-tuning essay writing. We will also be launching Accelerated Reader: a program that will help your child track his/her reading by creating a virtual bookshelf, taking quizzes to monitor comprehension and vocabulary development. We are very excited about this new addition to the intermediate classes!

Math:
The whole class will learn to look at number patterns to determine the function of the change in quantity. Please look for more information in your child's Monday Folder. We will learn to create "Function Tables" and graph them onto coordinate grids. It is a great introduction to algebra.

Science:
4th Graders are working on a Brine Shrimp experiment. They are looking for the optimal salinity that will garner the best living conditions for brine shrimp survival. They will also determine the range of tolerance. It is a fun, hand's on investigation!

Thank you for your help both in the classroom and at home! If you have any questions please feel free to email me at rhonig@mountainesd.org.

Warmly,
Mrs. Honig