Dear Parents,

This week will be a fun week with a trip to Kearsage Indian Museum in Warner, on Wed. and the Halloween parade on Friday.
We have been preparing for our trip to the museum by studying up on Native Americans. We have done some reading and also the Art teacher has incorporated the theme into her lessons.

The Halloween party will be after the parade. Mrs. Sangillo has been making phone calls and asking just a few people to bring in snacks. She will call other people for the Christmas party. For all parties, I request healthy snacks because I am sure the children will eat plenty of candy when they go trick or treating. Our parade will start about 1:15.

In Science we have been using the microscopes and classifying living things. Our theme words (totally made up by the fourth grade team) for Sept and Oct are Observify (meaning observe and classify) We used "obeservify" when we looked into the microscopes to observe and classify cells. We used Sequenize (meaning sequence and organize) while writing steps of a procedure. Next month's word will be technosearch (meaning research using technology). The children have painter's hats which they decorate and wear to motivate them while practicing the skills.

The children took a timed test of their multiplication facts. Most students need a lot more practice. I will continue to test them every couple of weeks and chart their progress. Please help me by having the kids study their fact triangles at home.

Have you checked out Raz-kids yet? The children seem very excited about earning points for their reading. I like the program because I can see who is really paying attention to their reading! For homework, the children should be reading, not listening to the stories, and then they need to take the quiz at the end. I get a print out on their scores, the dates that they read, and I can control their level.

Picture retake will be on Wednesday of this week.

Have a good week.