SOL Test Dates

We all have busy lives, so here are some upcoming dates that you should mark on your calendar as you are planning your spring and early summer events! These are the dates of the SOL tests your child will be taking in Virginia Studies, Language Arts, and Mathematics this year.

Thursday, May 19 Virginia Studies

Tuesday, May 24 Language Arts

Thursday, June 2 Mathematics

I have also added more dates of interest to the "upcoming events" section of the blog! Take a look and add those to your calendar as well. There are a lot of fun and interesting events happening as the year seems to be winding up! (Get me some kleenex please!!!)

Eagle Watch!

For the past week, we have been keeping a watchful eye on a nest of eaglets who have been newly hatched via a live webcam! This nest of eaglets is located in Iowa, and the mom & dad have been active in the nest and giving us a great view of their behaviors as we are studying animals right now in science. This has been fascinating! If you are interested in seeing this live webcam from home, paste this link into your browser window to see the eagles for yourself! You can also get to this link by visiting my portaportal site (from either a link from the Keister page under portaportals or portaportal.com guest access jslykhuis). The link is under the "Cool Stuff" tab labeled eagle cam. Beware there is a short advertisement when you first open the webcam feed, but then the eagles will appear!

http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html

Dr. Seuss Day!

This past week we had fun during our literacy block celebrating Dr. Seuss and his birthday! We figured that he would have turned 107 years old on March 2nd. We learned that his father was a zookeeper and he possibly got many of his ideas for the amazing creatures in his books from his father and the time he spent at the zoo! During our literacy time on "Dr. Seuss Celebration Day" we read Dr. Seuss books in partners and made story maps about what we learned from each story as many Dr. Seuss books have a strong theme. We also did a crossword puzzle with the many titles of Dr Seuss books. Did you know that his popular book Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet to see how few different words he could use in a book? We had such fun eating cupcakes, drinking punch, and even a few students got into the spirit with me dressing up as one fish blue fish, thing one or thing two, or the cat in the hat! They know I will never pass up the opportunity to wear a crazy hat! I love opportunities to tie food, crazy hats, and learning all into one! Ha! Have a great week!

Valentine's Day!

According to one student, "it was the funnest day ever!" I guess we still have a little grammar work to do this year! :) But I will agree and say we did have a great day together! We had a Valentine "Read and Roll" during literacy, we discovered how many Valentine candies really are inside a box of candy hearts and graphed the data in math, and during our content time, we had the best time of all! We made the adorable snowmen crafts your children took home (a huge thank you to Mrs. Varner for the supplies and help!) exchanged Valentines, had our Valentine box decorating contest, and had our long anticipated cookie exchange!

I must tell you just how wonderful your children are! One student accidentally took home another student's cookie plate in the rush of the end of our "great" day. The student with suddenly no cookies announced "my cookies are gone!" This seemed really odd, so we concluded it must have been an accident and surely they would return tomorrow. But another student, a terrific friend, said, "you can take home my cookies" and she gave the cookie-less friend her plate! Wow. What a pleasure it is to get to teach these wonderful students each and every day. I wanted you all to know you are doing an exceptional job as parents! There students are caring and respectful in so many ways and this is a wonderful example! And by the way, the cookies DID reappear the next day so the great friend DID get a cookie plate after all! I love happy endings, don't you?

Happy Valentine's Day! Thank you for allowing me to love your children!

4th Grade Highlights

Take a minute to watch this fun video showing some fun we have had this year so far in class! Click on the link to watch!


4th Grade Highlights

Snow Days!

I hope you are enjoying this extra family time with the snow! My children have had fun making snowmen, sledding and maybe not so much fun scooping the driveway! ha! With these snow days, the questions become, how will we "make up" the lost days? The news from school is that we will use February 11 and March 11, which were originally slated as staff development days. Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you soon!

We are half way there!

Wow! Time flies when you are having fun! I know I sure have been having fun each and every day spending time with your children. We have come a long way this year already, from our basic adding and subtracting numbers in math to learning how to multiply and do long division using several different strategies! In science, we have learned all about weather, the solar system, energy, motion and electricity! We are moving in time through Virginia's history and learning more and more reading skills each day! All of these new skills are what makes teaching such fun! The excitement is endless for learning new things, whether it is October or January! I would welcome you to come into the classroom and visit sometime to see this fun and excitement for learning for yourself sometime. We are there everyday! :) On the next half of our year!