Dear 4A Families,
I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Thank you all for your generous support of the Magazine Sale–You still have a few days to sell! The last day is Sunday, October 16th at 11:59 pm! This Friday the teachers will be taking part in a fall retreat day with the staff of Our Lady of Guadalupe School, so there is no school for the students. Go Mariners!
Safe Environment Lessons: Holy Rosary School, along with all the schools in the Archdiocese, will continue teaching the Safe Environment Program. This program is provided to us by the Archdiocese of Seattle and is part of our ongoing effort to help create and maintain a safe environment for children and protect all children from abuse. We will be teaching two lessons again this year. The first will be this month (October), the second in March. For more information check the information on this page. The topic of the October lesson is Boundaries: Students learn about personal boundaries and how identifying and honoring those boundaries can give a child or young person the self assurance needed to speak up when someone tries to step over the line. If you do not wish your child to take part in these lessons you will need to fill out this opt out form and return it to school by this Thursday, October 13th. Thank you.
All Saints’ Day Mass: Tuesday, November 1st at 8:45am
All 4th grade students will participate in the All-School Mass dressed as their Saint. We will not be able to accommodate family members at this Mass as we have in the past due to lack of space. There will be very limited seating available, (likely a couple of dozen seats at the most) for the School Mass,–but you will not be able to sit with your child. This Mass will be live streamed however, so you will be able to enjoy the service online.
Because we are not able to have parents attend the school Mass this year, we are asking families to sign up for one of the weekend Masses with your “saint”. There will be reserved seating at these masses for your families. Mass choices are Saturday, October 29th at 5:00pm, Sunday, October 30th at 8:30 or 10:30.
Please sign up for the Mass you will attend using this link:
Sign Up Genius no later than Friday, October 14th.
In preparation for the upcoming Masses, please start planning a costume for your child. Costumes do not have to be fancy. Many students use robes, graduation gowns, or just material that’s laying around. Look up pictures of your child’s saint for ideas. We also encourage some type of symbol that relates to the saint, like a cross, bible, flowers, basket, etc. There are pictures of past saints in the tab above called Saint Report and Mass Info.
Continue to practice the Prayer of St. Francis. It is a great bedtime prayer, and practicing right before you go to sleep helps with retention! The students will be reciting this prayer at the All Saints’ Day Mass.
Reading: We are enjoying getting to know the characters in Charlotte’s Web. The students will be starting a special writing activity based on Chapter 3 The Escape and will make their own Postcards from the Barn, which they will share with you at their conference in November. Check your child’s filer for two separate assessments covering chapters one and two. The first focuses on carefully composed written responses that use text evidence to support their answers. The second is a multiple choice comprehension test.
Spelling: Spelling lists for the week were sent home last Friday. This week’s words focus on short vowel sounds. The test will be this Thursday the 13th due to our Friday Inservice Day.
The students are doing lots of writing at school! In addition to the Postcards from the Barn, we will a also be creating Halloween Haikus and we are hard at work on our Saint Reports.
Math: We are working through our chapter on addition and subtraction of large numbers. Thank you for your support at home checking your child’s homework for accuracy. Regrouping with subtraction can be tricky! Look for math homework Monday-Wednesday this week. Regular practice on Xtramath should continue.
Social Studies: We will be wrapping up our work with latitude and longitude this week (but we will return to these concepts all year). We will begin our Washington State History beginning with the Native People of Washington State. The students will also be reviewing the 50 States and abbreviations. We will start with the NE States. The students will be introduced on an online practice site for our tests that they can also use at home. All students will come home with a study sheet for the NE States on Thursday. Extra study sheets and links are on the 4A Webpage in the tab called Map Study Sheets. This test will take place Thursday, October 27th.
Science: This week we will be working on Lesson 4 which is all about Sedimentary Rock and Fossils. We will go back in time and discover what life use to look like 100 million years ago! The students will gather evidence to describe how environments on Earth have changed over time. Students will explore the process of sedimentary rock formation preserves a record of those past environments. The activity is called Canyon Explorer where students will observe fossils found within a model canyon. The characteristics of those fossils provide evidence to support the explanation that the landscape has changed numerous times.
Just a reminder, as the weather begins to change please be sure students bring jackets with hoods on days that may be rainy or drizzly. We will generally go outside unless it is a real downpour. Also, please be sure your children’s uniform sweatshirts/sweaters are labeled with their name/grade. It makes things so much easier!
Have a great week everyone.