Dear 4A Families,
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It was such a pleasure meeting with you all last week during conferences. I am inspired and excited for the new trimester to begin. The signs of the season are beginning to appear as Advent begins. As we prepare for Christ’s birth, we are asked to look for ways we can serve others. As a school we are asked to participate in several outreach/service opportunities. As you know, the 4th grade students are collecting for the Pike Market Food Bank and Senior Center. We are accepting non-perishable food items for the food bank and hats, scarves, gloves, and socks for the Senior Center. We have boxes in our classroom ready to collect. All donations need to be in by Tuesday, December 3rd (our field trip day). Thank you all.
Pike Place Market! This Tuesday the 4th we will be heading off to wonderful Pike Place Market. Students are required to wear their uniforms, but they can opt to wear their Gator Gear or their red Holy Rosary Sweatshirts to the Market. Students should also wear good shoes for walking. All students will need to bring a sack lunch and a beverage, and they may bring $5.00 to $10.00 to spend at the Market, but no more please. Students will not be allowed to buy their lunches. The money is to buy a small treat or craft item.
Please make every effort to also send in a donation or two—or three… for the Pike Market Food Bank and Senior Center if you have not already done so. This is the 4th grade Advent Outreach area of focus. We are hoping to have donations from every 4th grade student to bring with us on Tuesday. Thank you so much!!!
We will be meeting with our Faith Families on Friday the 6th and all students will receive the names of their Advent Prayer Partners. Each student is asked to pray for his or her partner each day and make a special card for them. Directions for this project will be on a sheet of paper that will come home Friday with paper for the card and the name of your child’s prayer partner. Our hope it that the cards will be “from the heart” showing some real thought and time. This not only includes a nicely decorated/illustrated card, but a personal note and prayer of some type. The cards should be brought to school on or before Wednesday the 18th to make sure we have them all for our card exchange. If students misplace the name of their prayer partner they should ask their Faith Family teacher. Thank you for helping remind your child to add their prayer partner to their Advent prayers!
Religion: This Thursday, December 5th, the 4A students will be receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation with Fr. Oakland. We will review how to prepare and receive this sacrament in class this week. Your child will be bringing home an examination of conscience and the steps for receiving reconciliation on Monday. Thank you for taking time to remind/assist your child in his or her preparations for this special sacrament. Wednesday, during our preparation time I will give the students time to reflect and write notes down for what they want to say while in the confessional. They will bring a small copy of the steps with the notes they write on the back with them, so they do not have to memorize what they say. The sheet they bring home does not need to come back to school. Students should continue to practice the Act of Contrition. While they can use their sheet to pray during the service, all students are expected to be able to recite the Act of Contrition from memory by mid January. Students that have not received the Sacrament of Reconciliation can still take part in the reflections. Fr. Oakland invites these students to receive a blessing instead of confession if they would like.
Our class work this week will focus on preparation for Reconciliation as well as the Corporal Works of Mercy. The students will be tested on the Works of Mercy on December 17th.
Reading: Hopefully the students have a good start on their Quote Posters. If they brought home their notebooks over the weekend they should be sure to bring them back to school on Monday.
Language Arts: The students will begin a creative writing project called The True Story of Santa’s Reindeer this week. The project will reinforce paragraph skills, point of view, strong leads and conclusions along with descriptive word choice.
Spelling: Unit 11 lists will be sent home on Monday, but you can always access the spelling list from the Spelling tab above. The test will take place this Friday the 7th.
Social Studies: The students have a study sheet for the next map test on the Midwest States. This test will be next Tuesday the 10th. We do not have SS class this week because of the field trips, so students should be sure to include map review in their homework.
A message from Beth Martin: Family auction procurement due December 13th. More details or to complete the donation form: holyrosaryws.org/giving/auction
Homework:
- Spelling test for Unit 11 on the 6th
- Charlotte’s Web Quote Poster due on Wednesday the 18th
- Math fact (multiplication and division) at least 4 times a week until mastered for speed recall.
- Math homework most nights
- Midwest State test Tuesday, December 10th.
