Rick Riordan's New Series

I just read an article here. It seems that Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, and the brains behind the 39 Clues series has started to write another series. The series is called The Heroes of Olympus, and the first book will be released in October. I am so excited about this!

This link gets you to the book site. Enter the password: newhero, and you can read the first two chapters in the first book. I know many of my former students will be as excited as I am about this!

The Last Day!

Our Kennedy School tradition is a game called Elimination. The fifth graders played against the teachers today. We all had a great time! Here are a few photos.

I hope you all enjoy your summer and find time to relax with your families.

~Katie Merten

Books from our library

Now that our year has come to an end, it is time for me to start to organize our books for next year. If your child has a book at home that belongs to our class library, please be sure to return it ASAP. I will be here all day today. If you have a book and are unable to get here today, the school will be open this week from 8-3. Please just return it to the office and it will be put in my mailbox.

Thank you very much!

Katie Merten

Thank You

June 21, 2010

Dear Parents,

This year has been a very special one for me. Our class has grown so much! They are a kind, caring and special group of friends. I will really miss each of them.
I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you for the beautiful bracelet. I was touched by the generous gift, and the thoughtfulness in which it was bought. It is beautiful. I also am grateful for the Barnes and Noble gift card. I love to shop for books for our class there! Thank you.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for all of your support over the year. Sending in materials and snacks, assisting with projects and homework, and helping your child with day to day struggles of fourth grade all helped to make it a successful year. When students are supported at home, school is an easier place for them.
I realize that fourth grade is a challenge. The number of projects and the amount of homework we assign are difficult for many families initially. The United States portfolios alone took many hours to complete. I hope now that the year has come to an end, that you can see the benefits to all the assignments. I am confident that your children are ready for their next challenge, fifth grade.

Saying goodbye to the students will be very difficult this year. I will be sad to see them go, but I know that it is time for them to move on. I hope that I will see some of you in the future, when your younger children reach fourth grade.

Thanks again for all of the help and support you offer. You are great parents.

Fondly,

Katie Merten

Last Project of the Year

Today we did a project "Light Your Way", with the fourth grade. Mrs. Adams husband, Mr. Adams came to school as our "Engineer in Residence". We designed a hands-free flashlight to use if we were ever in a cave. Then we created a poster advertising our product. Everyone did a great job!

End Of Year Activities

Today we had our annual Fourth Grade Spelling Bee. It was a lot of fun! The words were pretty tricky! We had a couple of teams in the second round. The winning team came from Mrs. Adams room.






The winning team!



Our tiles were hung last week. We are thankful to the parents that helped with this, especially to Mrs. Juszczyszyn! The tiles were hung in the hallway near the art room.

PIctures

Thanks to Mrs. Prairie for sending in these pictures of Sports Day and our Coffeehouse. I hope you enjoy :).

Poetry Coffeehouse and Tiles

Our Poetry Coffeehouse was a great success! We all presented a poem, and our poetry band presented a haiku holler! We loved when Ms. Liz had the parents do the "Poetry Bus" poem. After our presentation, we had an open mike. We were excited that we had so many people at our open mike.

Thank you to everyone who helped with the refreshments for the Coffeehouse. Everything was fabulous.

Mrs. Shepherd took a video, and Mrs. Merten is going to try to get it posted for you to see. (it is a bit long).

Later last week, Mrs. Juszczyszyn and some other parents hung out tiles in the hallway outstide of the art room. They look fabulous. Mrs. Merten will share a picture of them next week.