Dear Parents,                                                     January 3, 2012

Happy New Year!  I hope that you all enjoyed a peaceful, restful, and blessed Christmas. I want to thank everyone for the wonderful gifts and warm thoughts sent my way – I truly felt the blessings of the season.

A new year – and what a school year we have planned!   We are starting theme 5 (Home Sweet Home) in our reading series.  Our reading strategy is questioning and the comprehension skill that will help us with that strategy is compare and contrast.  We will practice this skill using a Venn diagram.  Our phonics focus is on the consonant digraphs, th, wh, sh, ch, and tch.  We will also review triple clusters and the short sound of /u/. Our spelling words are from unit 17 and concentrate on the digraphs sh and ch. This is the last week with six basic words and one challenge word; next week the words jump to ten basic words and two challenge words.  Our grammar focus is on exclamatory sentences – sentences that express strong emotion and end with an exclamation point.

Our new chapter in math is focusing on numbers, beginning with teen numbers, and patters to 100. Religion finds us finishing up our study of the birth of Jesus and focusing on the Holy Family.  We will concentrate on social studies this week and review how we can save our resources.

Reminders for the week:

–    Water bottle sales continue on Tuesday and Thursday.  Thank you for your support!

–    Friday is a full day!

Have a wonderful week!

Miss. Manning