Our Christmas Movie:

The Ultimate Gift is the story of an extremely spoiled and self-centered young man named Jason who expects to inherit a fortune when his grandfather dies. Instead, Jason discovers that his grandfather has planned a series of activities that he must complete before he gets any inheritance. The activities are designed to help Jason learn that life itself is a many-faceted gift. Some of the twelve gifts Jason discovers include:

• The gift of work
• The gift of friends
• The gift of learning
• The gift of problems
• The gift of family
• The gift of laughter
• The gift of giving
• The gift of gratitude

In the end, Jason discovers that the Ultimate Gift is being able to give to others.

While the movie deviates slightly from the book, both carry excellent stewardship messages for young people. The book is only about 150 pages and extremely easy reading for older students. The beauty of the book is that students could read and reflect upon some of the stewardship messages that might be missed in the movie. Such powerful messages include:

• “The greatest gift anyone could be given is the awareness of all the gifts he or she already has.”
• “I thought that if you gave something away, someone else now possessed it, and you were left with less than you had before. In reality, when you give out of love, both the giver and the receiver have more than they started with.”
• “In those times when we yearn to have more in our lives, we should dwell on the things we already have. In doing so, we will often find that our lives are already full to overflowing.”

Each morning we gather around the Advent wreath and listen to the daily scripture reading.  We also pray our morning offering together.

We put up a little Christmas tree in our classroom. We all helped decorate and we are still bringing in ornaments. If you have any unbreakable ones that your family will not miss feel free to bring them in. We are also doing an Advent calendar. Every day someone gets a jolly rancher and reads a good deed. They also get to blow out the Advent wreath candles.

We are almost finished with Wonder. It is a great book!
By:Ella + Summer

This week we read some more Wonder. On Wednesday we finished Rube Goldberg.  Mr. Heinzen will have it on display so that we can share it with the rest of the school.  This week in English we learned about irregular verbs and regular verbs.

In gym class we played hockey and sticks ball and that was fun. We went on Quizlet and played around the world. We hosted the Advent Wreath Blessing and the all school Mass on Thursday and everyone did great.

 On Friday we had a play in social studies class. In social studies we did a graph  and next week we will do our own graph. Friday we sang a song Mary, Did You Know by Pentatonix. We also made snowmen in art class.  We also got our Brain Pop class set up so that we can watch Brain Pop.  Wwe watched one in English class on verb tenses and took a quiz.

 In Health we read a article about how you should not listen to loud music through ear buds because  the decibel level may be too much for our ears to be safe. It's nice it is warm so we have fun recces.      

It was a pleasure seeing all of you at conferences.  Enjoy this Thanksgiving weekend spending time with family and friends.

        This week in science we started our science animal classification projects. It is where we pick an animal and then tell the different classification levels of that animal. We made an art project for it. It was so much fun and they all looked so cool. :)  We also made snowflakes. Some had snowflakes, trees, and some just had cool designs. We made some of our own and others we cut out some shaded paper.

         We started a new list with our linking verbs (be, am, is, are, was, were, being, been, seem, appear, look, become, taste, feel, smell, grow, sound, stay, remain, turn). We all have a little dance to go with it, it makes it easier to remember. We had a test on it on Friday.

           Our Rube Goldberg project we are doing after school is going very well. We a trampoline and a basket attached to the track so when the ball comes down the railways it bounces off the trampoline into the basket. It is almost ready to display. It is AWESOME!

          On Thursday we had our garden clean-up day. We cleaned up the garden and got it all ready for winter. We picked out some onions and tomatoes and put it in the compost basket. It was very cold, but it was also very cool and fun.
                                                                   Our week was great!!
                                                                     By: Ally and Jillian

           

In reading class this week we learned about Trompe L'Oeil.  This is French for 'tricking the eye'. Watch this link to see amazing examples of Trompe L'Oeil.  We used the first segment (approx 3 min.) in class.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJytK-lDY0&feature=youtu.be

Students then chose a favorite to briefly research and then each wrote a descriptive paragraph using sensory details that allow the reader to visualize the trompe l'oeil. Come see our work displayed outside our classroom!

We also wrapped up our study of technology in science class.  It focused on medical technology and information/ computer technology.  Students used the design process to  design a box to hold their pens/pencils.  We also used models to study prosthetics and robotic arm movement.

As the quarter wraps up this week, we will have a test in both  Wordly Wise (Wednesday) and Science (Thursday)..

This week was very busy!  In religion class we were learning about the Sacraments.  Our final activity was to work with a group to design a poster and prepare a brief presentation about a sacrament.  All students did a great job!

In science we are learning about technology.  Our focus was on medical and computer technology.  We learned about X-Ray,  MRI, and CT (CaT) scans.  Mrs. Licht came in on Friday to share her experiences as an X-Ray Technician.  Her visit reinforced the concepts we learned in class, and also gave us a greater perspective on the uses of these technologies.  We also learned about advances in medical technologies with the development of prosthetics.  See the link below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/easton-lachappelle-prosthetic-robotic-arm-hand_n_6556458.html

As a service project, and related to our study of the Sacraments, we made cards for the big anniversary celebration taking place at St. Matthias Parish this weekend.

Finally, we celebrated Kabuki Awareness Day on Friday by learning a bit about the genetic disorder. We wrote letters to a local boy who has this Kabuki Syndrome, who is a close friend to Mrs. Blaha. When she shared the letters with him on Friday night, his bucket was overflowing with joy and laughter.  Thanks 5th graders for filling my bucket, Mrs. Blaha's, and especially our new friend, Paul.

            We had a very busy week. First off, we had many tests.  In religion, we talked about sacraments, and had a sacrament circle where we tried to define sacrament as a class. We also made sacrament posters to define the sacraments.
            We also started decimals in math class, and football in gym.
            Mrs. Caporale has started reading us a book called Wonder. It's about a boy who was born with a deformed face. We all seem to like this book very much and kept begging for one more chapter.
            Battle of the Books is starting up again soon and many people are super excited to compete in a fun way by reading.
            On the other hand, we are starting to make greeting cards. Today we are starting to celebrate our Soles for Education Walk. Many people are in their "Soles" shirts, and earlier we had pictures in the church. Don't forget to wear the leis at the walk so they know you're St. Matthias. We had an exciting week!

We watched a funny video in science about Alfred Wegener and his theory of Continental Drift.  Here is a link to it.  Please ask your child why this was fitting so nicely into our lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1-cES1Ekto

Enjoy the video!

We are reading Shiloh. It's about a boy named Marty who found a stray dog, and he wants to keep him  His parents don't want to have any pets because they cannot afford to feed another mouth!  We are reading chapters 10, 11, 12.We are having a lot of fun!

In art class we made paper bag haunted houses. Some of them are really spooky!

We did a paper towel experiment to see what brand of paper towel could absorb the most water.  We had Target brand, Members' Mark, and Bounty. It was so fun, but in the end we did not have one decisive winner.

We made fall cards for elderly people in the nursing home. Two people made a card for Mr.Bob, and two people made one for Ms.Mary from Camp Palmyra to thank them for our great trip earlier this month. We had so much fun this week! :)

By: Ally Z and Ella

Last week we got a chrysalis from Ms. Mary on our trip to Camp Palmyra. We waited all weekend and into this week, until it finally hatched into a butterfly on Wednesday! We named it Preston and when it hatched its wing was bent so it could not fly at first. So we took it to butterfly garden so it could get a drink of energy. Soon enough our Monarch butterfly moved from flower to flower until it was able to fly away.

This week we made thank you cards for the people at camp Palmyra, and for people who have been kind to us.  We also made fall cards for people in nursing homes.

 In science we did an experiment on bread to see which kept it fresher, and it was a plastic bag. 

We had a friendly competition to see which team would win with the most people signing up for the Soles for Education walk.  It was Mrs. Davis vs. Mrs. Mushall and Mrs. Davis won by a lot. Everyone who registered could wear PJ and everyone on team Davis got to have a donut.

We also celebrated two birthdays in the class, so we had lots of treats today!   

         This week in science we finished  our grow creature project.. Every day we measured and weighed it. Once it was done growing it got huge and then started to shrink. We had an amazing time.
         On Thursday we went on on a Field Trip to Camp Palmyra. We hiked 2-3 miles and learned about different types of trees and why the land was formed the way it was by glaciers. Later we had lunch. Finally Mr. Bob took us down a trail to learn about the whispering aspen tree.  Ask your child about it.  Why do the leaves make the sound that they do when the wind blows.  He also taught us about the prickly ash.  We learned that it is part of the citrus family.  When we rubbed a leaf between our fingers, we could smell the scent of citrus.  Beware- don't eat the leaves because they will leave your mouth numb.  The Native Americans used this leaf to numb a toothache! Then we had to go back to school and ride the bus. Camp was awesome.
                                                                        Ally P. and Jillian

Hello! This week we finished up our Bible stories. In science class we began an experiment with grow creatures. Each day we measure the length, width, and mass.  In the first day they grew to enormous sizes!  We are applying the skills of science in a very fun way.

We also were introduced to our first list in the Wordly Wise book.  Students were shown  the website Quizlet on which I have added their vocabulary lists for the entire year.  Please take a moment when you have a chance to see Quizlet.  I would need to send them the link to join our class so that our class is limited to only our students.  As always, keep in mind internet safety when selecting usernames and passwords.

Assignment notebooks are now here!  Students should be filling them out daily and sharing them with you.  Please sign the assignment notebook each day as homework is completed.  You may also leave notes for me in the assignment notebook (or of course, send a note or email if you prefer!)

Have a great weekend!

    Hello. This week we did plenty of fun activities such as our bucket filler activity. When we did the activity we had to get water from a tub to a small bucket by using PVC pipes cut in half. During this activity we had to work together. We did have some spills but we fixed them and had a lot of fun.

    We did a science experiment with M & M's and water. We had to observe what would happen to the M & M's when we put them in water. The colors dissolved together, and we had to record our observations.  When we were done the water looked all brown.

      Another activity we did today was a personality activity that showed us what Winnie the Pooh character we acted like. That is the fun we had this week.

                                                            By: Antonio and Owen

Our assignment notebooks have not yet arrived, but I hope that we will have them by Tuesday.  In the meantime, please rely on our blog.

We are working on "What does a scientist do?" in science class.   Today we focused on two skills- making observations and recording data.  We did a fun but challenging lab.  Be sure to ask your child about it!

It's been hot in the classroom, but the class is doing well keeping it together!  We are hoping for cooler days to come soon!  Have a nice day!

We had a fabulous first day of school.  Although there was a lot of information to take in (for all of us!), we mixed it up, and all went smoothly.

We did a fun teambuilding activity which required the students to work together.  It was quite interesting to watch the dynamics of the students as they communicated with each other to develop a plan.  Then they cooperated beautifully to achieve their task.  Please ask your child about it!

The class enjoyed the air conditioned comfort of Steiger Hall in the afternoon for a while and worked on a math puzzle as well as a word puzzle.  It was a great opportunity to allow me to see their comfort levels with numbers and words.

I am confident that we will accomplish much in this year ahead.  What a terrific class this is!  Have a nice evening!

Welcome to our classroom blog!  This blog will contain general classroom news, homework, and special happenings in our classes!

My name is Mrs. Caporale, and I am excited to be at St. Matthias School.  I have a wonderful family including a husband and 22 year old twin boys.  My family and I enjoy sports, especially the Packers, Badgers, and Bucks.  We also enjoy outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, rafting, and other adventures. I have been teaching for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee for 27 years, and I especially enjoy the family atmosphere and parent involvement that the Catholic Schools offer.

I look forward to getting to know you and your families as I continue my teaching career at St. Matthias School.