2nd Quarter Begins!

I hope everyone had a nice break and holiday!  We have 4 full weeks left until winter break and a lot to get done!  We started our writing unit on letter writing before break and will continue this week.  So far, the class has written to me and their writing partners.  We have also discussed the 5 parts of a friendly letter.  They will continue writing letters to various people, including a family member  and their 5th grade buddy.  This is a fun unit and the students are really enjoying it! 
We finished up our author study on Kevin Henkes.  We read many of his entertaining books.  The students were able to make many connections to some of the characters in these books since Kevin Henkes writes most of his books about experiences familiar to children.  We made a class graph, charting our favorite Kevin Henkes books, created a class book about a time when they felt brave, based on Sheila Rae, the Brave, compared characters in the books using a Venn diagram, and made posters about each of the Kevin Henkes mouse characters they read about.  This week we will be starting our reading unit on wondering.  In this unit, the students will be listening to many books and practicing stopping to think about what they are wondering. 
Please continue to practice word sorts with your children at home.  A new sort went home today. 
In science, we are starting our last chapter in weather.  The last chapter we finished focused on weather changes and patterns.  A graded quiz will be coming home today as well.  This next chapter focuses on weather tools and how weather is measured. 
We also started our new math geometry unit today.  It is only 3 lessons so we will be testing on Friday already.  We will be focusing on properties of squares, rectangles, and triangles and finding perimeters, as well as learing about parallel lines, parallelograms and quadrilaterals.  I sent home a ruler with a few students who said they didn't have one at home for homework.  If your child borrowed one please make sure it comes back Friday.  Thank you!
Have a great week!