5th Grade Forest Program: 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!