Vandenbosch News

Want help studying for the Sun/Moon/Earth test (on Monday, December 7)?  Along with using the review sheets that will be sent home on Thursday, December 3, try taking this phases of the moon quiz!

http://www.quia.com/rd/11412.html?AP_rand=521406306

These last three weeks we have been traveling to the Aquatic Center to swim. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful facility at our disposal!  Here are a few pics of our fun!

OK, so maybe not “surfing” the internet exactly, but we are enjoying our school’s new mobile computer lab!  Yep, we have 24 Netbooks to use for special projects in the classroom.  These computers are able to connect to our district server and the internet. Today we practiced our reading skill of interpreting and visualizing to create pictures to go along with Louis Armstrong’s song, “What a Wonderful World.”  We will put our pictures to his music soon!  So cool!

In Science we began out unit on the sun, moon, and Earth by looking at the moon.  We learned about the moon and what causes the phases of the moon.  In these pictures below we are the earth, the light (Julia) is the sun, and the tennis balls are the moon.  In the first picture it is the new moon, and in the second it is the full moon.

We are reading, reading, and reading!  Thank you to the moms who come in and listen and talk to our readers!  We are learning to make connections, visualize as we read, ask “thick” questions and make inferences.  Keep reading at home too!

We shared our first personal narrative this week.  Wow!  What great writers!  The stories are now hanging on our author’s gallery and are the most popular thing to read in this room!

Happy November!

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Halloween!  Thank you to all the parents who came in and helped us have a fantastic party last Friday.  Thank you, also, to Mrs. Veneklasen for organizing the party!  (If you would like to run the Christmas Party, it is not too late.  Let me know, and I will give the names of volunteers who signed up to donate or help you:-)

I t was great talking to everyone at conferences.  Thank you for coming and letting me touch base with you about your child.

We are in full swing and learning a lot these last couple of weeks and will be working strong until Christmas.  If your child is absent for any reason I will keep assignments that they can make up, but some of the things we do can not be duplicated or sent home.  We will do our best to catch up in class and with work sent home, but stay home until you are completely well!

Thank you to Mrs. Raschke, Mrs. Bloss, Mrs. Beck, Mrs. Veneklasen, Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Sievertsen, Mrs. Powell, Mrs. Beeler, Mrs. Whitaker, and Mrs. Henning for volunteering to listen to children read during the week!  This experience will help to make more fluent readers.

I have posted some pictures from the Halloween party on our picture page on the right.  Enjoy!

Check out this great website for fun math activities!

http://www.jmathpage.com/

We had a visit from the Spring lake Fire Department last week during Fire Safety week.  We reviewed how to be safe in the home and toured the fire trucks.  Despite the rain, we thought they were pretty cool!

MEAP tests are here!  Today we will take part of the Reading test, and we will finish it on Thursday.  Next week we will test Math and Writing on Tuesday and Thursday.  Please be sure your 4th grader has a good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast.  A healthy snack and a water bottle would help too.

We are starting our reading workshop and learning how to respond to our “Just Right” books.  Next week we will start meeting in small groups for instruction.

Each week your child takes home 5 new words to study for the week and a list of any words missed the previous week.  Study these words a little each day.  We work on the structures and spelling patterns during the week. On Thursday a Take Home Task to be completed at home reviews the one important skill or pattern that will be tested on Friday. Please help your child to be familiar with this concept, as knowing these patterns will help your child become a better speller, not just memorizing words.

In Social Studies we are currently looking at the geography of the US including relative location, physical and human characteristics of the US and more.  We are really using our atlases and discovering different maps of the US that show different things, such as population, geographical features, agriculture, etc.

Each day we learn a bit more in math. Our unit is covering a lot of concepts at once.  We are really working on multiplication and division word problems and comparing raphs and charts.  Math homework has been 2 or 3 timea a week, and everyone is doing a fantastic job of returning homework!  Yeah!

I look forward to seeing everyone next week during Parent/Teacher conferences.  I hope you received a slip with your day and time.

Last Thursday Fairmount Minerals hosted our classes at Construction Aggregates in Ferrysburg.  We learned about their sand mining operation including what the sand is used to make, and how they restore the land through planting.  We looked at the huge bulldozer, we planted marram grass and trees, and even mined for gems, something Fairmount Minerals does in other parts of the country.  They sent us home with nice new hats and a tree to plant!  Thank you to the parents who went along with us and drove us!

Unfortunately when we returned to school my camera failed and I lost all the pictures I took!   On the Class Picture page I included some pictures Mrs. Smits took that day, and hopefully I will receive some pictures that the CACM people were able to take, and I will include those too.

We have begun the hard work of 4th grade!  We started our Word Study and DOG units a couple weeks ago, and we started writing workshop and our math curriculum this week.  The testing of our reading should be complete this week, and so next week we will learn more about our reading workshop.  We even had our first science test this week!  Your help at home is always greatly appreciated and really affects your child’s learning.  Thank you for practicing the multiplication and division facts, reading and discussing what he or she has read, and studying for the science test!  Everything you can do with your child reaps benefits at school!

As hard as we are working we are still having fun while we learn!.  Last week we had an assembly with Skippy and Dave (check the picture page) who talked to us about bullying.  We learned some great strategies to use to get away from bullies.  Tomorrow we head to Ferrysburg to the Construction Aggregates Corporation to finish our study of sand mining.

The Bank of VandenBosch has been open and cashing checks twice already.  Thank you, parents, for your donations to the 4th Grade Store which opens this Friday!  Everyone is working hard to earn money based on their behavior and returning homework, etc.  Keep up the good work!

Check out this short video of us and Mr. Overway’s class running down the dune at Hoffmaster!

HE Rocks

This week we trekked out to Hoffmaster to learn more about erosion and the relationship of living things in that habitat.  We used magnets to find magnetite in the sand and had a chance to run down the dune too!  Thank you to the parents who helped us on this adventure. 

Watch this short video clip of a magnet pulling the magnetite right out of a handful of sand!     Jumping Sand 2009

During “Thirst Quenching New” each week we fill our mugs with juice and sit down to enjoy Time For Kids to learn about current events happening in the world.  We read and discuss the articles and how they relate to our lives. We are learning so much!

Congratulations to our new Student Council representatives: Sophia, Drew, Lilly, and Nathan!

It was great seeing everyone at Open House last Thursday.  I am sorry if I missed you.  Please don’t hesitate to call or email with any questions, etc.  That night you were given information about our trip to Chicago on June 3.  Please decide if you would like to pay the $75 cost or raise money to help pay by selling the Entertainment Books that went home Friday (and chocolate this January), and send in your choice on the slip.

I have added a new page called Class Photos.  Check out a few pictures from our trips, activities, etc.