Literary Nonfiction and Book Reviews

This week we began reading "literary nonfiction" which are true stories that really took place. We began by reading Nubs: A story of a mutt, marine and a miracle. Then we read Two Bobbies. These are two amazing stories that the kids really enjoyed!

You can watch a video of Nubs at:

You can find the website for Two Bobbies at:

http://www.twobobbies.com/ The kids may enjoy looking at it.
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And our next writing project will be writing book reviews. After writing commercials we will then videotape them to put online (after permission slips are signed!) Stay Tuned!

Homework Update

I cancelled writing homework for the week since I couldn't get the work to the copy machine in time. By the time it came back it was Wednesday afternoon so the kids wouldn't have gotten it til today. Next week we'll get back into the full rotation!

Welcome Back!

I hope you had a great, relaxing spring break! I went to Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and even Canada! I'll have to post pictures later... (I keep saying that... We don't have a program to upload photos on our older computers but I'll find something soon.)

Today we worked on synonyms and antonyms. I found some games online by going to Google and searching "synonym online game". The links we played today can be found here:
http://languageartsgames.4you4free.com/synonyms.html

On benchmarks we will have questions like, "What is a synonym for ______" and "What is an antonym for ______" so this may be something you continue practicing.

Also, we have the four homeworks as usual.

1-Reading Homework "Ana's Great Day"
2-Home reader read twice by your child to you, who initials each time
3-Spelling activity
4-Language arts "What I did on my Spring Break"

Social Studies:
We are starting United States symbols for this week. We'll be going over the American flag and how it's changed since 1776 as well as the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, and more. For additional information and a tricky game try these sites:
http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/symbols/
http://www.texaslre.org/asymbols/symbolsgame.html

Two Days Left

Welcome to the last week before spring break. After a great trip and a beautiful wedding (of my best friend from high school) I'm back and ready for some Spring preparation!

Remember, Friday at 3pm is our Spring Party. Please feel free to join us. We'll be eating a few sweets and then parading around with our Mardi Gras masks around campus. If you'd like your child to leave with you from the party please have your note turned in to me before 10am Friday!

Also, I see that Mrs. Hollister, my substitute since Friday, did not pass out language arts homework or the home reader. I did pass these out today. If your family has difficulty completing the reading and/or 4 sentences before Friday please send me an email and we can make arrangements to have a later turn in date.
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Today we had the wonderful pleasure of having Mrs. Lowery come and storytell for us today. She told an amazing tall tale, Pecos Bill. She also helped us learn how we can exaggerate our writing just like her. In the next few weeks when we get back from Spring Break we'll be able to write our own tall tale!

Before the end of the week we'll wrap up our autobiography posters. To those who have pictures they'll have them on their poster. For those who didn't get a chance to bring them in, we'll just use our drawing skills to complete our posters. We'll be posting a few a week to get to know each other. I'll post some pictures when we can of the posters before we get to bring them home.

Social studies, we learned about 4 significant people in the Texas Revolution:
-Sam Houston
-Stephen F. Austin
-Santa Anna
-Davy Crockett
We'll learn about the three battles: Gonzales, Alamo and San Jacinto. Then we'll have an open book quiz on Friday before we leave.

As always, if you have any questions please let me know!