October 7, 2013 Dear Parents, It was wonderful to meet with you and your child last week at S.E.P. Conferences. Thank you for all the good you do to help your child’s education. As you could see, we are always very busy in our classroom. We are having fun but most importantly, we are leaning a lot. Math: We will continue with the concepts learned thus far this year concentrating this week on number patterns, symmetry, place value. I will give the chapter 1 pretest on Monday and send it home with the students. Please go over with your child any they may have missed. I will do this in class as well. The chapter 1 test will be on Tuesday. Picture Retakes: Retakes for pictures will be on Monday October 10th. Field Trips: We had two exciting field trips last week. On Wednesday we met our pen pals from East Elementary from Mrs. Mosdell’s 2nd grade class. On Friday, we went to SUU to the Braithwaite Fine Art Gallery and to Frehner Natural History Museum. Then we had the special treat of having Dr. Robert Eves from SUU give us a presentation on rocks. It was fabulous. We appreciate his taking the time to do this for us. The students were engaged the entire time and learned a lot. They were thrilled when he gave them their own piece of iron pyrite (fool’s gold). Reading Parents: Thank you for coming each week. Your help is greatly appreciated. Spelling: Watch for spelling words to come home today. The test will be on Thursday. Science: We will continue with our rock unit this week. Weather: The weather is turning cooler. Please have our child wear a jacket or coat to school each day. We do go out to break and when the wind blows it is cold. The furnace is not fixed yet, the part should be here soon and installed, so it is cold in our classroom as well. Harvest Holiday: There will be no school on October17th, 18th and 21st because of the Harvest Holiday. Homework: Math homework goes home with your child on Wednesday to be returned on or before Friday. The purpose of this is to review concepts being covered in class as well as build responsibility in each child. The other homework I give is for the students to read each day for at least 20 minutes, 5 nights a week. Reading is one of the most important things your child can do each day. Thank you for encouraging this. Language: We will learn about the “r” controlled vowels this week and will continue to work on those throughout the year. We are also working with writing stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end with a problem and a solution. We’ve learned that stories need characters and a setting as well as lots of detail to make them interesting. Thank you so much for your help and support. Sincerely, Brenda Haight I'll try to get some of the pictures from our field trips posted next week. The process is being a little difficult. Thanks! Our Blog: mrshaights.blogspot.com