January News

Welcome back and Happy New Year! 

           I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the lovely gifts and thoughtful notes on the occasion of my birthday and Christmas.  They were most appreciated!  

In Social Studies we continue to work on Unit Three, Using Our Resources.  Our focus is how people use technology to change their environment.  As we move forward in the unit we will investigate how new methods of transportation and communication link people, places and things.   

          In Math we have begun adding two-digit numbers.  The students will be introduced to, and become familiar with regrouping, building estimation skills and solving problems requiring more than one step.  Please keep working on memorizing addition and subtraction facts. Practice with Flash Cards as it really does help.    

January is the month we begin to practice the strokes we will use when writing script.   It will be weeks before we actually start doing work in this discipline, but by May the children will have achieved confidence in their script writing abilities.

        The New Year brings us to a new unit in our Religion books.  The children have begun their preparation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  We will begin with a study of the Bible, and the Ten Commandments.  The unit goes on to discuss sin and God’s forgiveness.  We are memorizing An Act of Contrition.

        A huge part of preparation for the Sacraments is attending Mass on Saturday evening or Sunday.  Please make every effort to attend Mass with your children and a special reminder for our first pre-Communion Mass of the New Year which will be on January 8, at 9:30.

Keep reading every night!   Most of the children are doing a wonderful job with their Reading Logs and it is evident in their abilities. It is wonderful to see their confidence in reading and their reading abilities grow and mature.  They are all doing a fine job and I am proud of their efforts.

The children are beginning to write in paragraph form, please support this at home.  Remind them to: write a title, indent, include an opening sentence which should contain the main idea of the paragraph, 4-5 sentences supporting the main idea (details), and a strong closing sentence.  In addition, concerning homework, remind the children to write answers in complete sentences, and to include part of the question in their answer. 

Catholic Schools Week begins with Mass on Sunday, January 29th, at 11:00 am. Please join us!  Visitors are most welcome to stop into our classroom during the week at the designated times. A separate flyer will be sent home with the times we are open for a visit.  Please remember you are here to observe only, and quiet would be greatly appreciated in the classrooms as well as around the building, as classroom doors remain open, and school is in session.   Hope to see you as we celebrate our Catholic School, St. Francis of Assisi.