February

• Grades 1-3 Choral Concert February 4

• February 14 - Valentine's Day

• No School: February 17 for Professional Development

• Parent/Teacher Conferences March 4 and 6

Please check your child’s pencil pouch. Many students are in need of fresh supplies. Some students are borrowing from the classroom supply on a daily basis, which indicates they need their own items. Check especially for pencils and red pens. Remind your children to be respectful of their supplies. Also be sure that papers in your child’s take home folder are emptied each night. It can be difficult for students to locate assignments due each day with corrected papers still in the folder. Thank you!

Also, please remember to mark all of the winter clothing with your student’s name.  Black snow pants easily get mixed up. Thanks for sending along chapsticks, extra socks, and hand lotion for your
students.

 The concert is Tuesday, February 4, at 6:00 pm in the Forum. Students should arrive to their classrooms by 5:50 pm. Students should dress nicely to show pride in presenting their music to the community! School dress code will be
enforced.

We continue our study of the thirteen colonies yet this month. The students also will be learning about some famous colonists during this time period including  Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and William Penn.  Students will be completing and presenting a report on one of the colonies.

Tying in with our plantation studies, we will be taking a look at some literature by African Americans, “Dream Variation” by Langston Hughes and The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton. Our saying this month will be “touch and go”.

Many students have become very skilled at dividing words into morphographs. We are currently learning when to drop the final “e” in a word.  Keep up the good practice on the lists before the tests.

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During the month of February students will be completing an instrument project.  Students will create a musical instrument and write a report on how their instrument produces sound. Mrs. Brown will visit our classroom to kick off this project. Instruments will need to be created at home, while the writing portions will be largely done at school.

In Reading Mastery 3 we are moving right along in our textbook. Every night your child should read all of the next day’s story with you. The nightly reading should take about 15 minutes with you sitting next to your child and making sure that they are pointing and allowing you to notice if they misread a word. This will better prepare them for class rather than rereading the lesson they did that day at school. After you finish reading together, please initial their bookmark.

Thank you for faithfully listening to your students read each
evening.  It is imperative for your child's  success in reading.  We continue with our lessons in Reading Mastery 4 and will soon start reading Beauty and the Beast. Also, please encourage your child to use good penmanship and mirroring when answering their questions.

Most of the students know their addition facts well, but some are still struggling on their subtraction facts.  Keep working on those facts.  They are crucial to a strong foundation in math.  The students need to know how to multiply by 0, 1,2,5,7, 9, and 10 so far, and they are subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers and working on some geometry.  It is essential that the students complete their homework each evening.

The Saxon 5/4 students impress me with their work ethic. Students should be practicing their math facts a little each night. The “memory group” facts seem to be the most difficult for many
students. If you are looking for ways to assist your student at home with homework, checking that your child has a label along with the answer when necessary is a great way to help. Most homework points lost are due to missing labels. Also, equivalency charts are in the textbook. Look to the lesson in parentheses under the problem number.

We will continue our Human Body Systems unit in February. Students will learn about hearing, vision, the muscular and skeletal system, the nervous system, and about how the body systems work together. Check students assignment notebooks for specific check points such as the parts of the ear test, parts of the eye test, and the bones test!

At Classical School, each classroom has its own practices for days that are celebrated.  If your child’s classroom is participating in a Valentine’s Day celebration, we ask parents to observe the following requests:

• Our Valentine Party will be Friday
  February 14th.  

• Students will be decorating their own bag for collecting classroom valentines.  The class list will be sent home as a hard copy. If you would like to send along stickers, doilies, etc. for decorating valentine bags, this would very much be appreciated.

• Please be sure to include a card for each student in the classroom to avoid hurt feelings by leaving some students out.

• Students may include one small, inexpensive prize per Valentine card such as a pencil, small set of stickers, or temporary tattoo. Please no candy or snacks due to the district’s food policy .

Students will learn about the verb doler (to hurt) and the 5 senses. We will also cover basic illness, and body parts will be reviewed.