5th Grade Forest Program: October 10, 2025

UPCOMING EVENTS AND REMINDERS

*Are you looking for a way to volunteer? As a school, we would love to give you the opportunity to volunteer and supervise our class for lunch. You would arrive at 11:25, take students through the hot lunch line, and then supervise the class as they eat lunch. Students would be dismissed to the playground for recess at 12:05. If you are interested in helping, please check our sign up! Thank you!

*Author Field Trip: 5th graders will travel by bus to Calvin University on Tuesday, 10/28 to culminate our reading and writing units. We will meet award-winning author Gary Schmidt and tour campus. We will be reading Schmidt's book, Pay Attention Carter Jones during class. (The class does not know about the book title yet, so please keep that a secret!)

Students who want Dr. Schmidt to personally autograph a book may purchase it ahead of time and bring it along.

Parent chaperones will be needed for this field trip. Please e-mail Mrs. DeZwaan if you are interested.

*Hearing and Vision Screenings:

Screenings for Hearing (4th grade) and Vision (3rd, 5th grades) will be taking place at Pine Ridge from October 27-29. Please be sure to have your student wear their glasses, contacts, and/or hearing aids to school on those days, if they have them. If you would prefer to opt out of the screening, please send an email to the office at pr@hollandchristian.org, with that request. Linked here are the Screening Letter for Parents that Allegan County has written as well as a Parent Information Document for your perusal.

*Our K-2, 3-4 and 5-6 Little Maroons Basketball Clinics and 3-4 League is open for registration! There is information about dates, times and locations in the linked registration.

https://campscui.active.com/orgs/HollandChristianSchool

* GRANDPARENTS' DAY - We are excited to welcome grandparents and friends on Monday, Oct. 13 for our 1:00 pm program and classroom visits. If your child plans to go home with their grandparent or friend at the end of the day's activities please notify the office AND your child’s teachers. They will need to check out with the office.

We have been practicing and are ready for our grandparents and friends!

* Report cards will be emailed to parents as a PDF today.

* Conferences are Thursday, 10/16 and Monday, 10/20 at school. Schedule Link

Curriculum Highlights

BIBLE: In our next Bible unit, we will learn about the first miracles of Jesus and then dive into more of His early ministry. Stories include Matthew's banquet, the selection of the disciples, and a healing on the Sabbath. Students will record their spiritual learning and thinking using a digital response journal in Google Slides.

MATH: We also started to look at how fractions and decimals go together.

READING: We have jumped into our next unit and are spending our time looking closely at characters. We are noticing what they say, how they say it, how they treat other characters in the text, and when they act in a way that surprises us. We use all that information to help us determine what kind of person they are - what character traits would we assign to them.

SCIENCE: We continue to gather data on macro-invertebrates, comparing the number of animals near manmade structures and in open water, temperature, pH and turbidity.

We then record our data on our project board so others can see our progress and our findings.

WRITING: After drafting their personal narratives, writers have turned their attention to revising with an emphasis on complete sentences, paragraphing, correct punctuation, and transitions.