What an awesome day we've had!!  The kids did a wonderful job singing for the residents at Linden Grove.  I'm so proud of them.  :)  We received lots of compliments from the staff there about our good behavior.  That really "fills our buckets"!

When we came back to school, we listened to the 7th and 8th grader's Advent prayers, and then voted on which teacher was wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater.  Ms. Sartoris (7th gr.) was the first place winner and deservedly so.  :) 

Due to the freezing rain and ice skating rink playground, we had indoor recess and watched Polar Express.  A great movie for this time of year.  Then we ended our day with a super fun Christmas party complete with Christmas Tree knock-down, a reindeer craft and delicious snacks.  The kids insisted that I open their gifts so they could see them.  I want to say "THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!" for your generosity!!  It is a blessing to have these kids with me.  I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  See you all on January 6th.  :)

Today was a fun day!  We completed our angel decorations for the residents at the Linden Grove Nursing Home.  Our 7th grade buddies came in yesterday to help us start the project by painting the paper plates.  Then today, they were back again and we cut the plates, formed them into angels with wings, attached the head and halo, and put some sparkly glitter on.  I wouldn't be surprised if you're finding glitter on your kids until New Year's Day!  It got a little crazy with 30 some kids in here all playing with glitter.  I feel for Mr. Kurt and Mr. Ed.  We did our very best to clean up, but as you can imagine, it is no easy task.

We're looking forward to singing for the residents.  It will really be a special way to head into our holiday.

Some students have come home with books that they should be reading.  The title may either be "Tam and Sam in the Orange Grove" or "Sam and Tam".  Please take some time with your child to read these over.  We are also working on them in class.

Wow!  What a week we've had.  Phew!  The Secret Santa Shop went very well today.  The kids were very enthusiastic shoppers.  They can't wait to share their gifts with you.  :)

Today we were in search of employment.  All of us had to pretend we were a reindeer and come up with a name.  Then, we filled out a job application stating why we should be hired to pull the sleigh.  The kids got pretty creative when it came time to thinking up special skills they would possess to get hired on.  If you're around the building next week, come check out our writing.  :)

Next week is our last week before Christmas break.  It should be uneventful, except for Friday when we visit the nursing home to carol, and have our Christmas party in the classroom.  If you haven't sent in your $1 and permission slip yet, please do so on Monday.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!  Stay safe in the snow!!

Wow!!  Winter sure has arrived!  Brrrrrr....  Please make sure your children have an extra pair of mittens/gloves as they tend to get pretty wet during their morning recess.

Don't forget our Christmas concert tomorrow night.  Students should meet me in the church at 6:15.  You will keep your child's coat with you.  After the K4 and K5 kids are done singing, they will come back to sit with you.  If you're staying for the cookie social tomorrow, please consider bringing a dozen cookies to share.

Today the kids are coming home with their Secret Santa envelopes, but they won't be shopping until Friday.  (Please keep the money home until then.)  We have parent volunteers coming in to take our students just a few at a time.  It would be helpful if the kids each had a separate shopping bag to carry home their gifts.  It also helps to keep each student's gifts together.  The Secret Santa Shop is not mandatory.  :)

Hustle and bustle is certainly in the air here in K5!  You can tell that a special holiday is right around the corner.  :)  The Book Drive is in full swing.  Thank you for bringing in those new/gently used books.  You still have more time if you haven't sent yours in yet.

The weather sure hasn't been very cooperative these past 2 days, but it seems the rain is going to be replaced by very cold temperatures.  Please be sure to send your child to school with hats and mittens/gloves.  We do go outside unless the temp or wind chill is 0 degrees.  Snow clothes aren't really necessary unless there is snow on the ground, however.

Our grocery store has been closed down.  The kids helped me take all of the items outside to the recycling dumpster.  Now, it's time to fill that space with something new.  Hmmm......  :)  Thank you for all of your donations to our store.

In January, we will start building our igloo.  In order to do this, we need LOTS of EMPTY, CLEAN and DRY gallon milk/water jugs.  If you could save them in a safe place until after Christmas break, that would be great!

In math this week, we've been working on patterns and graphing.  The kids enjoyed using some of these skills to help decorate our classroom!

Please keep practicing those sight words!  We're also spending some time with the "-op" family this week.  Don't forget to read, read, read!  :)

Our classroom Christmas party will be on Friday, December 20th at 1:00 pm.  Thank you to those who volunteered to help us out!

Plates and Napkins:  Iris Apriesnig
Treat:  Angela O'Boyle
Drink:  Arran Romboy
Healthy Snack:  Kari Simcakowski
Craft:  Amanda Brosnan

We are still looking for a game.  Anyone interested?? :)  Just let me know.

Have a great day everyone!

Welcome back!  I hope everyone had a well rested Thanksgiving weekend!  The feast was a wonderful success.  Thank you again for helping make it such heartwarming event.  :)

Can you believe it's December already and we're now in Advent?!  Today in church, all of our classroom Advent wreaths were blessed.  The students are preparing for Jesus' birthday as well.  Mrs. St. Louis challenged us all to do service for others during this season, and our class came up with a list of things they can do to be helpful.  The kids are coming home with this list today, and should choose 1 activity a day, to do.  After it's completed, they can cross it off and choose another one the next day.  This will take us right up to Christmas!  (I told them that they would need to do 2 things today, since we weren't here yesterday.)  :)

Just a reminder about some upcoming dates....

NO SCHOOL - Friday, Dec. 6th
Christmas Concert - Tuesday, Dec. 10th
Secret Santa Shopping - Friday, Dec. 13th
All School Christmas Caroling - Friday, Dec. 20th
Christmas Break - Dec. 21st-Jan. 5th.

We're busy getting ready for our prayer service and feast next week!  This is a wonderful time to sit back and reflect on the things we are grateful for.  :)

While finishing up our preparation for our event, we are still in need of Thanksgiving plates (approx. 90), 1-2 large jugs of apple juice, and napkins.  If you would be willing/able to provide these things, it would be greatly appreciated!   These items are not something that would need to be brought to school on Friday, but just let us know if they'll be here next week.  Thank you so much!  All other items should be to school tomorrow.

Today we did some more writing with adjectives.  We used our story "Animal Babies in Grasslands", and talked about how the animals can be described.  Then, we wrote a sentence describing the giraffe and made a picture to go along with it.  Our writing is getting pretty good!

This week we're spending a lot of time talking about things that we are grateful and thankful for.  With the recent devastation in Illinois, it makes us reflect more and appreciate the gifts God has given us!

Our Prayer Service and feast are next Tuesday, November 26th at 11:30.  We will begin with the Prayer Service then head into the cafeteria for our meal.  Students WILL NOT need hot or cold lunches on this day.  This feast will take the place of our lunch.  If you have not turned in your RSVP slip, please do so as soon as possible. 

Thank goodness the snow is gone (for now)!  (I'm not ready for all of that yet!)  :)  However, when it does return, please send your child's snow clothes in a separate bag.  It is important that ALL ITEMS are labeled with your child's name.  Also, it's helpful to have an extra pair of mittens/gloves and socks.

I'm thankful for you all!

I hope everyone survived the Halloween weekend and didn't eat too much candy!  We're back to our regular schedule here at school and this week we began our science unit "Force and Motion" with the K4 class.    So far we've talked about how living AND nonliving things move.  What makes them move?  What are some words that describe how things move?  We'll be experimenting a little more this week with gravity as well.  How does this affect things moving?

St. Joe's student council is sponsoring a food drive for the Muskego Food Pantry.  It will run from November 4th-18th.  They are running this in a contest format.  They will be averaging out the amount of goods collected with the amount of students in each wing.  First prize is a dress down day! 

Please save the date of Tuesday, November 26th for our K4/K5 prayer service and feast.  Details are still being finalized, however the date is set.  Each child is allowed to bring 2 adults.  Watch for more information to come!  We will be looking for parents to help us out with set-up, possible preparation of food, serving, and clean-up.  Let me know if you'd be willing to help out!

The weather is getting colder now, and before you know it, the snow will be upon us.  Please make sure that your child has gloves, a hat and a warm coat for recess time.  A great thing to practice at home is zipping jackets and tying shoes.  As you can imagine, these little details take lots of extra minutes in our day.  Especially when we get into those snow pants, etc!

Happy Halloween everyone!!  It's shaping up to be a great party day!  Scary costumes and all.  :)  Thank you to everyone who donated something to our party.  It's greatly appreciated!

Don't forget to turn in the Book It! calendar to receive the FREE personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut!  A November Book It! calendar will go home tomorrow.

Have fun trick or treating tonight!  Hopefully this rain will stop.  :(

Today we started our wrap-up of the Community Helper unit.  If you're in the building next week, stop and take a look at the bulletin board outside our room.  Find out what your child wants to be when they grow up!

Next week is an exciting week- Red Ribbon Week.  Follow along with the list of events and help us all say "NO!" to drugs:
Monday- Wear red.  Be creative!! 
Tuesday-Wear spirit wear tops with uniform bottoms.  Root beer floats will be available for $1 in the afternoon.
Wednesday-Wear sunglasses.
Thursday-Halloween party in the afternoon.
Friday-Early release at 10:30.  Uniforms required.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!!

We're continuing our unit on Community Helpers.  Today we focused on the mail carrier.  Please watch your mail in the next few days for a special note from school! 

Our Halloween Party is coming up next Thursday, Oct. 31st.  The kids should bring their costumes to school and will change into them after lunch recess.  We'll start our afternoon off with an all-school costume parade in the gym and then the party continues in our classroom.  Thank you to the following parents for volunteering:

Samantha Anderson:  Napkins
Iris Apriesnig:  Treat
Jenny Bergmann:  Drink
Shelly Wohler:  Cups
Kari Simcakowski:  Plates
Amanda Brosnan:  Healthy Snack
Stacy Abraham:  Craft
Sarah Haftarski:  Game

It should be a great time!! 

Have a wonderful week!

We're continuing on with our Community Helper unit and this week we had a visit from the Big Bend-Vernon Volunteer Fire Department.  They showed us all the different tools and hoses on their trucks and we got to see a fire fighter suit up.  They sure do wear a lot of gear!  Our classes also talked about fire safety in the home, particularly in the kitchen.  There are so many things to be careful of!

Next week, watch for your scheduled conference slip to come home.  If there is a conflict with your date/time, please let me know right away.

Have an excellent long weekend!!

We finished our Apple Week with some delicious apple products.  Our classes made mini apple pies, ate applesauce, apple jelly on a cracker, and drank apple cider.  Who knew so many things were made with apples?!  The students are curious about apple pickles though.  We'll have to see about that.  :)

A reminder to all that Monday is the LAST day students can wear shorts to school.  Have a wonderful weekend!  We're looking forward to the field trip on Friday!!

Just some quick reminders....

Picture re-take day is this Friday.

ALL FIELD TRIP SLIPS AND MONEY FOR GREEN MEADOWS FARM IS DUE ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27TH!  Please let me know if you'd like to chaperon as well.  :)

We finished up our unit on Matter today with an "explosive" experiment in science class.  It was called "Mystery Substance".  Our job was to predict if mixing a mystery substance, baking soda, and vinegar, would turn into a solid, liquid, or gas.  (Hint:  our mystery substance was food coloring.)  Most of us thought it would form a gas and they were right!  We got a colorful foamy explosion!  It was so cool.

I wanted to give everyone a "heads-up" about a field trip we'll be taking to Green Meadows Farm on Friday, October 4th.  The permission slip should be going home tomorrow, but we need a quick turn around with the fee and slips.  Therefore, the monies will be due on THIS FRIDAY!  So sorry for the short notice.

Today we met our new music teacher, Mrs. Kuhl.  She's so nice!  We are very happy to have music class again.  :)

Our classes continued being scientists today.  We experimented with different items to see if they would sink or float.  We were pretty surprised at the results of some of our items.  It was a lot of fun!

Reminders:  Library and DOLLAR DRESS DOWN DAY tomorrow.

Today our K4 and K5 classes were Scientists!  We talked about what a scientist does and how their work is important.  Ask your student how our "Liquid Race" went today!  We discussed why certain liquids may move faster than others.

Grandparent's Day was a great success!  We really enjoyed going to mass and having everyone in our classroom today. 

Remember, if you're planning on ordering, book orders are due on MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH.

This week we started a new unit in science called "Matter".  There are 3 states of matter:  solid, liquid, and gas.  Today we went on a "Matter Walk" outside to find different solids, liquids, and gases.  We are having fun in our K4/K5 Student Learning Communities!

Thursday is Back to School Night for parents.  Looking forward to seeing you there!

Remember to send in your 4 x 6 family photos and the Grandparent's Day forms are due tomorrow!

Today was our first day at the library!  Mrs. Sidello said to keep our books in our backpack.  We need to return our books next week so we can check out a new one.  We had a fun day!!

Homework Calendar

Our homework calendar went home today.  Make sure to look it over and get started right away!