A special thanks to all the adults who joined us for the Lava Beds trip! Having such a large number of reliable chaperones helped make it a great experience for the kids. For those of you who didn’t attend, know that the kids were GREAT! I hope they came home with lively stories about getting stuck in lava tubes, seeing the Modoc’s warrior pole, or perhaps babbling about cinder cones and lava fields.

In class this week, the students will be getting their first list of vocabulary words, which are themed around the Modoc Wars. They’ll work with the words for the next ten days or so before being tested. Our vocab program goes beyond merely spelling and instead focuses on using prefixes, suffixes, and roots to break down words for meaning. This week we’ll also be continuing our study of bats, starting new reading groups, and trudging through multi-column subtraction, culminating with their first chapter test on Friday. Here’s the math homework for this week: Monday, Sept. 22; Tuesday, Sept. 23; Wednesday, Sept. 24; Thursday, Sept. 25.

Two final items of note: Tuesday is our first assembly of the year. We’ll be identifying our Students-of-the-Month for September. Also, there’s no time to rest; our next field trip is just two weeks away! On October 3rd we’ll be heading to Crater Lake. Permission slips and info sheets will be sent home soon.