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Welcome back to school! Welcome to Week 2! Practice Kindness as our Virtue Week: August 17 - 21 , 2026
Attendance
Attendance
Attendance is incredibly important.
Class News
Class News
🚐 Texas Mobile STEM Lab — September 1!
🚐 Texas Mobile STEM Lab — September 1!
We are excited to announce that our class has been selected to participate in the Texas Mobile STEM Laboratory on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, from 11:35 a.m.–12:35 p.m.
Permission slips must be signed and returned for students to participate. Students without a signed permission slip will not be able to take part in the Mobile STEM Lab experience.
Our Engineering Challenge: Stable Figures
Our Engineering Challenge: Stable Figures
Our class will complete the Stable Figures engineering challenge. A stable figure is a structure designed to remain balanced, upright, and secure rather than easily tipping, shifting, or collapsing. Students will think like engineers as they design, build, test, evaluate, and improve a solution.
This experience directly supports our Grade 4 Texas Science TEKS, including:
Science 4.1B: Use engineering practices to design solutions to problems.
Science 4.1G: Develop and use models or design a prototype for a solution to a problem.
Science 4.2D: Evaluate a design or object using criteria.
The Mobile STEM Lab gives students an opportunity to apply these standards through a real, hands-on engineering design challenge rather than simply reading about the engineering process.
We are especially excited because being selected for a Texas Mobile STEM Laboratory visit is an honor and a special opportunity for our school.
Please return your child's signed permission slip as soon as possible so that they can participate!
Classical Education Connection: Studia et Ludi
Classical Education Connection: Studia et Ludi
Studia et Ludi is Latin for “studies and games” or “learning and play.” The name reflects an important idea in classical education: serious learning and joyful discovery belong together.
Studia represents the habits of careful study—reading deeply, practicing skills, memorizing what is worth remembering, asking thoughtful questions, and developing the discipline to do difficult things well.
Ludi can mean games, play, or even school. In the ancient Roman world, ludus was a word used for both play and a place of learning, reminding us that education is not meant to be merely a collection of assignments. Children learn through curiosity, conversation, imitation, competition, investigation, storytelling, and delight.
In 4th grade, we will work hard. We will memorize poetry, wrestle with challenging texts, practice mathematics, study history, investigate the natural world, and develop our writing. But we will also wonder, tell stories, experiment, debate, create, laugh, and play.
Studia et Ludi captures what I hope our classroom will be: a place where discipline and delight work together in the pursuit of what is true, good, and beautiful.
🌲 Take Learning Outside: Every Kid Outdoors
🌲 Take Learning Outside: Every Kid Outdoors
Did you know that every U.S. fourth grader is eligible for a FREE pass to more than 2,000 federal lands and waters through the Every Kid Outdoors program? The pass is valid during the fourth-grade year, from September 1 through August 31, and can provide free admission for the fourth grader and accompanying family members at participating sites.
I strongly encourage our families to take advantage of this opportunity—not simply because it is free, but because the world itself is part of a child's education.
Classical education asks children to encounter what is true, good, and beautiful, not merely to read about it. A photograph of a canyon is not the same as standing at its rim. Reading about a historic battlefield is different from walking across the ground where history occurred. Learning the parts of an ecosystem takes on new meaning when a child can hear the birds, examine the rocks, notice the plants, and begin asking questions of their own.
This is also part of educating the whole child. Children need books, numbers, poetry, and careful instruction—but they also need movement, fresh air, silence, beauty, exploration, and opportunities for wonder. A walk through a national park can become science, history, geography, art, physical activity, conversation, and family memory all at once.
Finally, we cannot expect children to value what they have never learned to love. Conservation begins with relationship. When children explore wild places, encounter wildlife, learn the stories preserved at historic sites, and discover that these places belong to our shared national inheritance, stewardship becomes something more meaningful than a vocabulary word. We want children who understand that enjoying something beautiful also carries a responsibility to care for it so that others may enjoy it after us.
The National Park Service describes these lands as places preserved for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of present and future generations. That idea fits wonderfully with a classical education: we receive an inheritance, learn from it, care for it, and pass it on.
So, take your fourth grader outside this year. Hike a trail. Visit a historic site. Earn a Junior Ranger badge. Look at the rocks. Read the signs. Watch the birds. Ask questions you don't know the answers to yet.
Wonder is one of the beginnings of wisdom.
Families can learn about the free fourth-grade pass and obtain one through the National Park Service's Every Kid Outdoors program.
What We’re Learning — In Brief
What We’re Learning — In Brief
We are moving from learning our classroom routines into the rhythm of a full week of 4th-grade learning!
Literature: We will continue building the habits of thoughtful readers as we explore story elements, point of view, author’s purpose, and main idea with supporting evidence. Students will practice narrating what they have read and supporting their ideas with details from the text.
Grammar & Writing: Our Writing Bootcamp continues with sentence structure, complete sentences, fragments and run-ons, and editing. We will also continue practicing the parts of speech and building the strong sentence-analysis skills we will use throughout the year.
Math: We are working with large numbers and place value. Students will practice reading, writing, comparing, ordering, and rounding multi-digit numbers while explaining their mathematical thinking.
Science: Our young scientists are learning how scientists observe, measure, record, and communicate information. We will continue our germination investigation and practice using measurement tools accurately.
History: We are beginning our study of maps and how they help us understand the world. Students will work with different types of maps, discuss their purposes, and begin using Cornell Notes, narration, and evidence-based responses in history.
Roots & Poetry: We will continue developing our habits of recitation, memory work, and careful attention to language while exploring our Greek and Latin roots and playing with the ways roots help us understand unfamiliar words.
Important Things to Keep in Mind
Important Things to Keep in Mind
As we enter Week 2, students will begin taking on more responsibility for our daily routines. Please continue to encourage your child to come to school prepared, keep track of materials, and take pride in careful, complete work.
Our notebooks are becoming our “living textbooks.” Students will add notes, examples, diagrams, narrations, reflections, and other work throughout the year. Careful notebooking is an important part of our classroom, so neatness, organization, and attention to detail matter!
Please also continue to support daily reading at home. Consistent reading is one of the most valuable ways students can strengthen vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, background knowledge, and—most importantly—a lifelong love of good books.
Earned Free Play
Earned Free Play
Please be on the lookout for communication from our Headmaster regarding Earned Free Play and expectations surrounding this special part of our school week.
Earned Free Play is just that—earned. It is an opportunity for students to enjoy time with their classmates while also learning that responsibility, self-control, preparedness, and completing one's obligations come before leisure.
Once you receive the Headmaster's communication, please take a few moments to review it so that we can work together to help our students understand and meet these expectations.
🏠 Homework & Reading
🏠 Homework & Reading
Building Habits of Study
Building Habits of Study
Fourth-grade students are expected to complete up to 50 minutes of assigned homework plus 30 minutes of reading each school day.
Homework is an extension of the learning we do together at school. It provides students with opportunities to practice skills, strengthen memory, build fluency, prepare for upcoming learning, and develop the habits of responsibility and independent study that become increasingly important as they grow.
What Might Homework Include?
What Might Homework Include?
The 50-minute homework period may include work from several subjects rather than 50 minutes for each subject. Depending on what we are studying, students may be asked to practice:
Math skills and concepts
Spelling, vocabulary, roots, or grammar
Memory work and recitation, including poetry
History or science review
Writing or unfinished practice
Other assignments connected to our current studies
Students will use their Red Homework Folder to help organize materials traveling between home and school.
📖 Plus 30 Minutes of Reading
📖 Plus 30 Minutes of Reading
In addition to assigned homework, fourth graders should read for at least 30 minutes each day.
Reading is not an “extra” assignment. Consistent reading builds vocabulary, background knowledge, comprehension, fluency, imagination, and familiarity with increasingly complex language. Most importantly, we want students to develop the habit of reading as something a person does throughout life—not simply something completed for school.
Whenever possible, allow your child to spend this time actually reading, rather than completing an activity about reading. Novels, biographies, history, science, mythology, poetry, and other worthwhile books all have a place in a young reader's life.
When Homework Takes Too Long
When Homework Takes Too Long
The 50-minute guideline matters. Homework should provide meaningful practice without consuming the entire evening.
If your child is consistently working diligently and assigned homework is taking substantially longer than the expected time, please let me know. That information is useful! It may indicate that your child needs additional instruction, a different support, or that I need to reconsider the amount of work being assigned.
The goal is not simply to finish pages. We are building the habits of attention, perseverance, responsibility, and independent study—while still leaving children time for family, play, movement, rest, and wonder.
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