It’s crazy to think that winter break is upon us!  Everyone has been working so hard this year, and I am so proud of my students.  It’s time to enjoy a nice vacation!  I want to wish you all a wonderful winter break with your families!  Happy holidays and have a happy new year!  See you in 2019!

*Important Announcements This Week*

*Winter Party:  Thank you to our amazing room parents, Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Martindale, for organizing our class’s winter party that we will have on Wednesday!  Last week, your child brought home a permission slip with information about the food we will be having for the party.  Please sign and return it letting me know if your child will be allowed to eat these foods.  Also, if you have not already, please send in $3.00 with your child to help offset the cost of the party.  Please send in cash with your child to school, and I will make sure that it gets to our room parents. Thank you very much for your help with this.

*Jingle Bell Jam:  Short Pump’s annual “Jingle Bell Jam” will take place on Wednesday morning at 9:00 am.  Please send in a jingle bell for your child to jingle, if you can.  We will be enjoying a fun celebration in the gym first, and then will head outside for our Jingle Bell walk outside around 9:30 am.  Parents are welcome to come watch the outside portion of the event at 9:30 am.

*Virtual Lesson with VMHC:  On Tuesday, we will have our next Virtual Lesson with the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.  The students have been enjoying these lessons with the museum instructors!  It’s a great way for them to see and analyze primary sources about what we are studying in social studies.

*What Are We Learning In Class?*

*Reading: 

This week we will continue our study of sensory words.  Last week the students enjoyed listening to the book Owl Moon, and worked in groups to identify and sort various sensory words and phrases in the story.  This week, students will have the chance to write their own poem using sensory words.  The class will take a short assessment on sensory words on Tuesday, 12/18.

*Math:

This week we will continue our unit on division.  As we discussed in class last week, it is really important for students to follow the same steps each time and not try to take shortcuts.  They still need to follow along and use their notes to help them when practicing independently. Please encourage your child to use the example problems that we put into the math notebook when they are at home and working on homework. From this point forward, students will need to check each division problem that they do by multiplying. There are notes in your child’s math notebook showing exactly how to check by multiplying.  We will continue both Type A and Type B 2 digit division this week.  The class will take a 2-digit division quiz on Monday 12/17 (it will cover both “Type A” and “Type B” problems).  This week we will move on to do “Type A” 3-digit division. Problems that we consider to be Type A 3-digit would be a problems such as 538 divided by 7 or 185 divided by 5.  In both of these examples, students would need to divide the divisor into the first 2 digits of the dividend because the divisor is greater than the first digit of the dividend.  Please see the examples in your child’s notebook for help.  Thank you for checking in with your child on how they are doing with division.  It will be especially helpful to continue practicing some problems over winter break, so they don’t forget how to do them!  Thanks so much!

*Science:

This week we will continue our new unit on the Earth, Moon, & Sun.  Last week we learned about the historical contributions of 4 famous astronomers.  This week we will learn about characteristics of the Earth, moon, and sun and compare the three of them.  Then we will learn about rotation and revolution, while discussing the causes of day and night and why we have different seasons.  Students will take a Quiz on the 4 astronomers on Friday, 1/4.  They will also take a Vocabulary Quiz on the Earth, moon, and sun vocabulary words on Tuesday, 1/8.  Please encourage your child to be studying these words.

*Social Studies:

We will have our next virtual lesson with the VMHC on Tuesday, but won’t be starting any new content until after Winter Break.

Have a fantastic break, everyone!  Happy New Year!  🙂

-Mrs. Jacobsen