Friday, November 21, 2025

November 21, 2025

 UPCOMING EVENTS AND REMINDERS

Thankful for this group of kiddos! 


Calling all 5th graders! We need your help!

What: YOU helping shepherd our younger Forest School families through the woods by candlelight reading Luke 2.
When: Friday, December 12 from 6-7:30pm
Where: Forest School cabins/woods

You will be paired with another 5th grader to be leaders so you won't be alone! We will also have hot chocolate for all of our helpers (and everyone else there ðŸ˜œ).

Parents, if this is something your child is interested in it, and can commit to, please let us know! 
 Feel free to email your kiddos teacher or audrey.ryckman@gmail.com or if easier, text Audrey at (740)215-1533 and she will reach out with more details. Thank you for helping make this event so special!


MARK YOUR CALENDARS! We will be presenting our water quality work during an open house at Pine Ridge on Thursday, December 11 at 8:30 - 9:45 am. We will start in the Media Center for a welcome and instructions and then given time to listen to students present on their investigative questions and data. We would love for you to join us! 

Our Pine Ridge annual charity collection will run through Tuesday, 12/16. 5th grade will collect items for Hope Packages. This organization provides “first night” bags for children entering foster care. Last week a green flyer was in your child's Take Home Folder highlighting new items that students can donate. Thank you!

3rd Annual “And Heaven And Nature Sing” Family Fun

We hope you can join us for a special evening in the Forest with your family from 6:00 - 7:30pm on Friday, December 12! As part of this third annual event for FS K-5 families, the FS Parent Board has planned a special craft, a guided nighttime hike through Luke 2, and Christmas caroling together! Kindly RSVP for this event by Friday, December 5.



Winter Gear

The cold temperatures are coming! Check out these tried and true gear recommendations compiled by the Forest School Parent Board as we welcome winter. 


READ and FEED! This coming Tuesday we will celebrate the hard work we are doing with our PR expectations with a Read and Feed. Thank you to those who donated items for our caramel apple bar! 

NO READING MINUTES or SPELLING WORDS next week due to the shorten school week. 

NEXT 5TH GRADE BLOG will be posted on December 5.

If you signed up to bring something for our PR celebration on Tuesday, THANK YOU! Please send those in as soon as you can so we can make sure we have everything prepared. Please see this link for a reminder. 


Weather: As the weather changes please be mindful of the parameters that we have in order to make sure kids are prepared to play outside for the duration of our outdoor time. Less than 50 degrees; all students must have a jacket outside. 49-10 degrees we will go outside for the full duration. 10-0 degrees we will go out for a maximum of 15 minutes. Less than 0 we will enjoy recess inside. 

Lost and found: The lost and found album is updated regularly. Please keep checking it out and having your child claim the things that belong to you!

Book Fair: December 8-10

Our school book fair is more than just a chance to pick up a new favorite book–it is a fun and exciting way to support our school library! Every purchase helps us earn new books for our Pine Ridge library by putting more stories, knowledge and inspiration into the hands of our students. In order to make this happen, we need your help! Please sign up to help us make our school book fair a successful event.

Even if you can’t help out, please come join the fun and help us grow our library, one book at a time!  You are welcome to come in and check out the fair or you can order online starting December 5th.


Curriculum Highlights
BIBLE: We finished our unit on the Sermon on the Mount by taking our test on Wednesday. Then we spent some time this week looking at the events leading up to Christ's birth - noticing details that we might not have noticed before.

MATH: We spent time working on one step and multi step word problems that contained decimals. We reviewed concepts from this unit and took our unit test today. Next week we go return to fractions, but this time we are multiplying and dividing them! 

READING: Next week we finished up our unit on Interpreting Characters. After Thanksgiving we will begin working through an informational text that helps us understand the time period we are studying in Social Studies. 



SOCIAL STUDIES: This week we took a closer look at other European Explorers that made their way to America. We talked about their motives and how their actions effected others. 









We headed out to Outdoor Discovery to continue our study of people groups in America hundreds of years ago. We explored the Voyaguers cabin and learned more about the European voyagers that came and lived here in Michigan.






WRITING: We have worked hard this week drafting, peer revising our scientific essay, and publishing them as we get ready for our presentation on December 11. 







OUTDOOR LEARNING SCHEDULE FOR NEXT WEEK

We played some Capture the Flog as a team building activity! 

Monday: Saugatuck Dunes
Tuesday: on campus
Wednesday: NO SCHOOL
Thursday: NO SCHOOL
Friday: NO SCHOOL



Friday, November 14, 2025

November 14, 2025

 UPCOMING EVENTS AND REMINDERS

ART REQUEST: For an Art project coming up next week students need a cardboard box.  They will be designing and creating Christmas houses. Our next Art class is Wednesday. 


MARK YOUR CALENDARS! We will be presenting our water quality work during an open house at Pine Ridge on Thursday, December 11 at 8:30 - 9:45 am. We will start in the Media Center for a welcome and instructions and then given time to listen to students present on their investigative questions and data. We would love for you to join us! 

Our Pine Ridge annual charity collection will run through Tuesday, 12/16. 5th grade will collect items for Hope Packages. This organization provides “first night” bags for children entering foster care. Last week a green flyer was in your child's Take Home Folder highlighting new items that students can donate. Thank you!


Pine Ridge students are working hard at displaying PR expectations and we want to celebrate! Please see this sign up for ways you can help. 🙂



3rd Annual “And Heaven And Nature Sing” Family Fun

We hope you can join us for a special evening in the Forest with your family from 6:00 - 7:30pm on Friday, December 12! As part of this third annual event for FS K-5 families, the FS Parent Board has planned a special craft, a guided nighttime hike through Luke 2, and Christmas caroling together! Kindly RSVP for this event by Friday, December 5.



Winter Gear

The cold temperatures are coming! Check out these tried and true gear recommendations compiled by the Forest School Parent Board as we welcome winter. 



Holland Christian High School’s Entrepreneurship class is raising money for Refuge on the Rock, an orphanage in Guatemala. Our students have been working hard to make quality products, home decor, and more, which you can see at HCdesigns.store. Thank you for your support! Jackie Brink


Would you like to see your tuition bill decrease? 

It isn't all about the gift cards any more. In the past year RaiseRight has increased the ways to earn WITHOUT using gift cards, and we would like to share these new options with you! Join Kim and Kristi, our TRIP coordinators, in the High School Media Center at 6:30 on Nov. 18 and learn all about the TRIP program. Please enter through Door A.



Curriculum Highlights
BIBLE: We finished our unit on The Sermon on the Mount this week with a prayer hike through Saugatuck Dunes. We used the acronyms PRAY and ACTS to guide us through our personal prayer time.











A study sheet is coming home today to help students prepare for our test on Wednesday.

MATH: Rounding decimals numbers to the tenths and hundredths place helped us estimate the answers to both addition and subtraction problems. We also started to look at bar graphs that included decimals. 

Look for a multiple choice math practice test coming home with your child. Students should complete the test as homework, check it with the answer key found in the weekly parent email, and re-work any incorrect problems.  This homework is due in class on Thursday morning, 11/20.

READING: As we read our "good fit" books we have been noticing details that the author repeats. That is a sign for readers to think more deeply about those details and grow deeper theories. We have also been comparing characters between books that we have read. 

SOCIAL STUDIES: We did some informational reading about the Indigenous People living in America hundreds of years ago. 



We also started to look at the explorers who made their way to the Americas. 


FIRE BUILDING: We practiced our skills of fire building at Sassafras Ridge, using the fire pits the students used last year. We had time to read a legend around the fire - reminding us that storytelling around a fire was something that the Indigenous people valued. We also tried our hand at making Wampum belts (bracelets). 





WRITING: We have been working so HARD on planning our essay. Based on our research and the data we collected we crafted a claim.

We wrote out our plan, gave and received feedback from our classmates about our reasonings and evidence AND then went back and did a little more research.







Whew! Now, we are taking that plan and using it to help us draft our essay. 

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! These essays will be used as part of our presentation during an open house at Pine Ridge on Thursday, December 11 at 8:30 - 9:45 am. We would love for you to join us! 

We also had a special visitor that was highlighted in one of our published personal narratives! 


TECH TIME: We took some time and Louis showed us how to change the wallpaper on our laptops!


OUTDOOR LEARNING SCHEDULE FOR NEXT WEEK
Monday: Outdoor Discovery Center
Tuesday: on campus
Wednesday: Sassafras Ridge
Thursday: on campus
Friday: on campus