How amazing it is to me that it is 2020! There was a recent Facebook post circulating that fit me perfectly. It read, “How can the year 2000 be 20 years ago, 1980 was only 20 years ago”!! Yeah, I’m old. Be that as it may, with the new year comes new opportunities, challenges, and triumphs. In the words of the old Irish toast that my Norwegian Grand-pappy used to say, “May the happiest days of last year be the saddest days of the new”! You might have to mull that one around a second, but it’s a good one.
We come back to school with the end of the term and report cards breathing HEAVILY down our necks!! We are finishing our Weather Unit, finishing our Informational Narratives, finishing a math unit and taking a checkpoint assessment, and reading all sorts of things! We don’t have a great deal of time, as our Weather Unit ends on the 17th, MLK day is the 20th, a new unit starts the 21st, and the teachers work on report cards the 29th through the 31st! It will be very important that every effort is made to make sure students are at school each day. There may also be some added homework in order to get a few things done – I will be sure to let you know exactly what is expected of anything sent home.
Our spelling test will be on Friday and I’ll get a new list out to students on Tuesday if their first packet is lost. We are hitting fractions hard and will be on them for a few weeks. We are reading a lot of informational texts and stories about weather and weather events. Writing has us working on our Water Molecule story and creating weather reports. In Theme we are clearly still in our Weather unit but will be finishing that the 17th. So much to do!!
Our upcoming (Jan 21st) unit on the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northwest has many elements and activities. One you may know of already is the button blanket. I cannot overstate the complex, artistic, and time-consuming nature of this project. We will need a bit of initial adult help with materials and supplies acquisition (hint: LOTS of buttons), quite a bit of adult sewing set-up help (changes to blanket dimensions this year), and a massive amount of one-on-one and small group help with sewing on buttons, many, many buttons. There will be another document coming with details. If you wanted to hit Goodwill and such in search of buttons, that would be helpful right off the bat. Simply send in bags-o-buttons at any time! Also, feel free to research the topic a bit here: https://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/buerge1.html and/or here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Northwest-Coast-Indian It is going to be a great unit!
Communication this year has gone through quite a change and it has taken time (for me) to get it all incorporated. I think I have the blog and forum issues cleared up, but some of you are not following the Forum part, which in turn means you don’t get any announcements such as my blog is updated and such. If you visit the Forum (https://www.molallariveracademy.com/forum) and click the word, “Follow”, at the end of the “South Clarkia”, section you will get any announcements I make. Also, my blog posts now publish directly to the South Clarkia page (https://www.molallariveracademy.com/clarkia-3rd-4th) so they are easy to find and read.
Thank you for your support, welcome back, and have a wonderful week!
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