Hi there. I hope all of you had a wonderful Easter and Spring Break. I am still enjoying mine, but we are on the road home tomorrow morning. We had a wonderful time on the North Carolina Beach on Easter Day. I finally have a tan!!!! We flew back to Denver this morning, and are enjoying some more pool time here. Safe travels home, and back to work on Thursday.

Tomorrow morning the kids will meed in the library due to painting. Mrs. Hankins emailed me and shared that I should be SOOOO proud of my class. That makes me smile. Character is how you live life when Ms. Erickson is not watching I always say. Great work kiddos.

Upon my return, we will begin our gray whale unit in science. We finished up the Arctic and Alaska before break. Hopefully all the projects made it home in one piece. They did such a great job on this unit, and almost everyone passed the I am the Ice Worm AR test, which tells me they enjoyed the story and were involved with it. Gray whales migrate to the Arctic so we will tie that in as well. We will spend a few weeks on this unit, and then onto forces and motion.

We will also begin our Montana History Unit in S.S. We will discover all sorts of things about Montana while we travel with Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea on their westward movement. This will tie in perfectly with our upcoming field trip to Pompey's Pillar come May. Fun!!!!!

We will finish up our Balto book and our Iditarod study in reading. Then, we will move onto our Riding Freedom novel. This is by far one of my FAVORITE books to read. It is such a touching true story and the kids just LOVE it!!! This will be a perfect tie in to our field trip out to Ms. Erickson's farm/ranch. We will spend the day there and learn all about many of the concepts that come up in the story and all year. Read 180 and Mrs. Culps class will also attend this field trip, so reading this story at home aloud together would be a great idea. If you need a book, just write me a note in the planner and I will check one out to your child. It will make a lot more sense if they read the novel. At the farm, the kids will go through stations. We have never taken this field trip so we are super exctied to bring many concepts to life for your children!

All field trips will be paid with our money that we raised on our Spaghetti Dinner night. Wow!!! Kids will of course have to buy into each trip for $1000.00 of their fake money as well. Hope they have been saving. They have had plenty of opportunities to earn it since Christmas Break when we started over. Ask your child how they are doing in this area. Write the amount they say they think they have to me in an email for a $100 bonus upon my return. I have kept all the emails that were sent from previous blogs.

Hopefully your child has their last weekly report turned in as well. I will be checking those when I return. Thanks to all of you that have texted or emailled me about the comments I wrote on them. I appreciate you talking to your child and to myself. Together we will get them where they need to be!!! Yes!

Have a wonderful tomorrow and Wednesday. I will not blog tomorrow as I will be on the road. I will post more vacation pics on Wednesday!!! :0) I have loved seeing your pictures and slide shows as well! Thanks for including me in your kid's outside school life. Which reminds me, I would love to attend ball games on Saturday afternoons. Please have your child bring me in a schedule and I will do my best to get to at least one game. :0) LOVE BASEBALL!