Week of October 7-11


Dear 4A Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. On Wednesday we will be gathering in the church for the Living Rosary.  In class we will review how to pray the rosary.  If students have a rosary they can bring it to school on Wednesday—that would be great. If not, we do have some extras to share.

From the Office:

Submit New Student Applications Now – 

If you are a current school family and have a new student to Holy Rosary you would like to have considered for the Sep 2025/June 2026 school year (especially one entering Kindergarten or Pre-K) please submit your application now. In its 2nd year, HRS now offers a Full-time Pre-K class (no after-school care available) as well as a Part-time Pre-K class. Re-enrollment for current students will happen in January. 

All Saints’ Day Mass: Friday, November 1st at 8:45am

All 4th grade students will participate in the All-School Mass dressed as their Saint.  There will be limited seating available for parents for the School Mass (they may open up the choir loft),–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 if you cannot make it in person.

We are also asking families to sign up for one of the weekend Masses with your child dressed as their saint. There will be reserved seating at these masses for your families. Mass choices are Saturday, November 2nd at 5:00pm, Sunday, November 3rd at 8:30am or 10:30am. Look for an email later this week with a link to a Sign Up Genius to sign up for the Mass you will attend.  We are hoping to have a nice representation of 4th grade saints at each Mass. We will also have some readers at each of these Masses. This is such a nice way to reach out to the greater parish community. 

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.  I do have some donated costumes/parts of costumes that I can offer as well. 

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 are learning to write original sentences that give context to the meaning of the vocabulary. Students use antonyms and synonyms along with parts of  speech to deeply understand the vocabulary.  Students are also learning to select clever, creative, and/or meaningful quotes from each chapter.

Spelling: Spelling lists for the week were sent home last Friday. This week’s words focus on long “e” vowel sounds; ea, ee, ie. The study sheet we passed out last Friday said November 7-11—but is it October. I got a little ahead of myself!

The students are doing lots of writing at school! Along with our saint reports we are also 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-Thursday 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 learning the  abbreviations along with some other features of each region.  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 were given a study sheet for the NE States last Friday. Extra study sheets and links are on the 4A Webpage in the tab called Map Study Sheets. This test will take place Thursday, October 18th.

Science: In this lesson, students will explore how solid rock breaks apart into smaller pieces through a process called weathering (including root-wedging and ice-wedging). In the activity, Sugar Shake, students use sugar cubes as a model for rocks. They perform an experiment with this model to understand the process of weathering and how this process explains why rocks at the tops of mountains are jagged, while those at the bottom are rounded.

Please be sure your children’s uniform sweatshirts/sweaters are labeled with their name/grade.  It makes things so much easier—and reduces the pile up in the lost and found.

Have a great week everyone.