Bartholomew Bats!


Our school is located in Round Rock, Texas which is near Austin. Austin and Round Rock both have huge populations of Mexican Free Tailed Bats that live under our bridges. A colony of bats lives beneath the Ann Richards/Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and in Round Rock, another colony resides under the Interstate 35 bridge over McNeil Road. Each evening from March to about October, the bats fly out from beneath the bridge and search for insects to eat. The emergence of the bats is a wonder to watch. We are also thankful that all these millions of bats eat the bugs by our homes.

Our class mascot is the Bat to honor the mammals that live so close to us and help us. (also because Bat and Bartholomew both start with the letter B!) The bats in Central Texas live together in a group and help take care of the young. Then they migrate together as a team. Our class will also live together in our classroom, work together as a team, and help each other out. We are the Bartholomew Bats!





Saturday, October 22, 2011

Red Ribbon Week is Here!

Hi,

We worked very hard this week. We presented our Native American presentations and performed some exciting poetry readings. We also solved some challenging math problems. It was an awesome week!

This week is Red Ribbon Week! Here are the themes for each day:
Monday-Winners Don't Do Drugs-wear sports team jersey
Tuesday-Too Cool to do Drugs-wear your sunglasses
Wednesday-Hats Off to a Drug-Free Life-Hat Day
Thursday-Follow your Dreams-Pajama Day
Friday-Coyotes CAN be Drug Free-Wear your Forest Creek Shirt and bring in a canned good to donate

Our class is participating in the October Essay contest. Each student has written a rough draft on bullying. We have been revising and editing and will be completing the final copies on Monday to turn in. Your child can create a poster based on bullying prevention or one of the themes for Red Ribbon Week for the poster contest. Your child may also want to write another essay for Red Ribbon Week. The essays and posters are due on Monday, October 24.

Forest Creek is also having their book fair in the library this week. Come and do some Christmas shopping and raise money for our school. The book fair will be open late on Thursday evening.

Thursday evening is our Passport to Adventure Literacy Night beginning at 5:00 pm. Admission fee is a book to donate (new or gently used). When you donate a book, you receive your passport. Visit each continent, listen to books, and see cultural presentations. Ballet Folklorico will be performing at 6:30 in the cafeteria. Promise Pizza will be selling yummy pizza slices for $1 and the FCE Relay for Life Team will be selling sweet treats to raise money for cancer research. Feel free to donate more than just one book. The children will get to choose a book to take home and any extra books will be taken to the Round Rock Serving Center for their Thrift Store. The FCE Book Fair will be open during Literacy Night. Join us for a wonderful night of cultural awareness and literacy!

Read about our week:

Reading: We continued to read poems and used the poem Dreams by Langston Hughes to make inferences and determine a possible theme. We wrote autobiographical poems and read poetry aloud with expression and actions. This week we will be reading about Explorers and integrating subjects by using reading skills to understand social studies content.

Writing: Poems were written and shared. We also worked on our bullying essays. We will be rereading our poems and choosing one to add to our published class poetry book. The book will be filled with poems written and illustrated by our class! The books will be hardbound and available for purchase. Order forms will be coming home this week. Please return the order form with your signature whether you'd like a book or not so that we can receive a free class book. We will also be writing individual books in the spring. These will also be hardbound and each child will get one book for free and may purchase more copies.

Math: Patterns and algebraic equations were challenging and fun this week. Many of the children are getting this and some are still working on mastering this concept. We will continue with patterns, input/output charts, and equations this week and throughout the year. We will also be working on elapsed time this week.

Science: We started learning about mixtures and solutions this week. Ask your child about our popcorn and water mixture. We also separated a beach mixture using tools. We took out pebbles and shells using our fingers and/or a spoon. We used a colander to separate the small pebbles from the salt water and sand. A coffee filter in the colander was necessary to separate the sand from the salt water. A hot plate was used to heat the water so that it would evaporate and the salt crystals would be left behind. We will be learning more about this topic this week. A study guide came home on Friday and we will be having a test on this material on Thursday.

Dates to remember:
Sunday,October 23-Texas Book Festival at the Capitol downtown
Tuesday, October 25-Service Club meeting after school
Wednesday, October 26-Early Release Day at 12:45 pm
Thursday, October 27-Science test on Mixtures and Solutions
Passport to Adventure: Literacy Night 5pm
November 3-PTA Reflections projects are due to Mrs. Arnold
November 4-Walk for Diabetes-envelopes are due as well

Have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy the beautiful weather and all the festivals! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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