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!





Sunday, January 5, 2014

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I had a wonderful winter break. We traveled to Philadelphia, PA to see our family and many friends. I am excited to be back to school and ready for a great second half of fourth grade! I can't wait to see everyone on Tuesday and hear (and read) stories about their break.

Don't forget the Holiday Reading Logs are due on Tuesday! 200 minutes are required. Anyone reading over 200 minutes will get a prize. The readers with the greatest number of reading minutes get to choose their prize first. Readers with less than 200 minutes will need to go to study hall. I look forward to hearing about all the awesome books that were read!

Science Project Checkpoint #3 will be due on Thursday. Your child will bring home another copy of Checkpoint #3 on Tuesday. We will be working on a class exploration involving water retention of different types of soil. It will be fun and interesting and we will set up our data and findings like a science project board. This model will help the kids understand the components as they work on their own projects.

Read about our week:

We will be talking about goals and New Year's Resolutions and will be setting some for ourselves. We will keep a copy of our goals at home and at school and will put a copy in an envelope that will be opened on the last day of school!
We will be finishing our presentations of our Smores Biography Projects and beginning to read and analyze various traditional literature (fairy tales, tall tales, legends, myths).

We will also be writing personal narratives about our winter break and finishing our revisions and editing of our career essays. Letters to our pen pals will also be written this week.

In math, we will finish up fractions and begin geometry. Vocabulary will be a big focus for geometry. We will also continue problem solving and work on increasing our speed with multiplication and division facts.

In science, soil and the properties of soil will be our focus. In Social Studies, we will read about explorers of Texas.

Have a great day on Monday! Put your kids to sleep early on Monday night! I can't wait to see all your children's bright smiling faces on Tuesday!

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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