I apologize for my delay in posting the weekly newsletter this week. I was out of town over the weekend, but I'm working hard to provide you with these thorough updates in a timely manner. :)
Language Arts: The
spelling words that your children are responsible for knowing this week are
from Chapter 6: Nature’s Demands. Here are the Latin words, roots, and English
derivatives:
Latin Word
|
English Root (part of word)
|
English Derivatives
|
vorare, voratum
(to eat)
|
vor, vour
|
devour, voracious,
carnivore, herbivore, omnivore, arachnivore
|
dormire, dormitum
(to
sleep)
|
dorm
|
dormitory, dormant
|
SUFFIX: “-ious”
meaning “full of”.
We will continue reading and
discussing The Secret Garden, and are
very excited about attending the performance on Friday! We look forward to
seeing you there! We are also planning a Secret
Garden tea party to celebrate our completion of the book next Wednesday
9/26! Please see the sign-up links in the post below for more information!
The
students are doing a great job applying the expository writing process to our
various content areas. They wrote eloquent paragraphs about beautiful Venice,
and this week, they will write one on a Kingdom from science. (This will be
part of their Science test Wednesday.) Please be sure to practice the Latin and
Greek words your children are learning this week, as we will be sure to cover
several of them this week. Our goal is to complete 25 by the end of the
quarter, which will be followed by a test. This test will include matching the
correct Latin/Greek word to its meaning, as well as identifying a corresponding
English derivative and definition. You should see the notecards coming home
every day!
Our idiom
this week is “few and far between”; please try incorporating these idiomatic phrases
into your daily conversations at home!
History/Geography: Have
you been swept off your feet by the fascinating information your child is
learning during their study of the Renaissance?! I hope you’ve found a place in
your home to display your child’s masterpiece from Friday’s Michelangelo
activity! This week, the students are learning about the accomplishments of
Raphael and Machiavelli, and discussing the concept of someone being a “Machiavellian
leader”. We will end the unit by taking a closer look at ways the Renaissance
affected other European countries during the 15th and 16th
centuries. The test over this
content is on Friday of this
week. Your child has been given the study guide, so this should be completed
thoroughly and used as a tool for preparing for the exam. (For another copy,
please see below.) I know the kids will do great on this assessment based on
their sincere interest and engagement during the unit!
Science: We are
wrapping up our study of Scientific Classification with a test on Wednesday.
(Please see below for another copy.) Your children will be responsible for
knowing all of the information on the study guide, as well as the
classification hierarchy, and the founders of scientific classification
(Aristotle and Carolus Linnaeus). This information is in your child’s notes,
and was also added to their study guide in writing as we went over it as a
class. The other portion of the test is writing an expository paragraph on a
Kingdom of the student’s choice. The students should be prepared on Wednesday
with a sheet of looseleaf that includes a topic/number sentence and three-point
sentence. I encourage the students to write a trial paragraph at home, to
ensure that they are prepared for the test. On the day of the test, the
students must have a sheet of paper with only these two sentences
written ahead of time; they will complete the paragraph during the time
allotted for the test. Happy studying!
Nearly all of the students have
turned their Kingdom Fungi WANTED posters in. If your child has not, it is due
on Wednesday. (They look great, by the way - very clever!) J
