Relaxation and rejuvenation

First, I would like to wish you a Happy Easter if you celebrate today! It feels abnormal to be sitting at my school laptop on a holiday. Still, after eight wonderful days off, I am not complaining. I hope your family had time to relax and recharge last week. About half of the class had travel plans, which can sometimes be more stressful than we remember when planning the vacation. I am hopeful that was not the case for you and that you and your children got some much-needed downtime.

The benefit of Spring Break being so late is that we are now halfway through April, and the weather is bringing us buds on the trees! Like the flowers, we will be blossoming into fifth graders over the next two months! With this comes some new units and hands-on projects... but I will also try to incorporate some weekly homework for the children. I would like to help them build responsible habits at home before summer break to better prepare them for potentially more work next year. Most homework will be math-based, so it will not apply to students that go to Mrs. Coen for math. It will also be a weekly assignment, given on Monday and due on Friday. This will allow the children to plan how and when to complete it without worrying about after-school activities. 

We are moving into a fun unit on Tall Tales for language arts. Many of the children will be familiar with our stories, allowing us to take a deep dive into character traits and figurative language. The students will be hearing read-aloud stories, writing their own stories, and even have the opportunity to work with classmates on readers' theater scripts. I am confident it will be fun and engaging!

In social studies, we are continuing to learn about government. To make the roles and responsibilities of our elected officials come to life, we will discuss the positions of classroom leaders. Afterward, we will decide what their responsibilities should look like and vote to elect those officials in our classroom. It will be an exciting week!

Since the weather is shifting, I would last like to remind families that now is an excellent time to have students bring home winter gear from lockers. Most boots went home, but I think we still have snow pants and gloves in lockers. I would also suggest that students come prepared every day with a coat (and maybe even a spare pair of slacks) until we are officially out of the cold. Many students think April and May mean they can shed their coats and dive for footballs, but they end up with rosy red hands and freezing legs from the mud and chilling Ohio wind. ​

Dates to Know:
April 22 - Pj Day for the school!
April 23 - Project Pride
April 28 / 29 - MATH AIR Testing
April 29 - Bath Team Hero shirts / popcorn Friday
April 30 - Bath Nature Preserve STEM Event
May 4 - Stress Less Day
May 9 - MAP ELA Testing
May 11 - MAP Math Testing
May 12 - Fourth grade Field Trip (details coming home after spring break)
May 23 - Celebration of the Arts begins