What a great week in 3rd grade!  All of the boys and girls are gaining confidence in the classroom and are becoming great friends with each other.  I am so proud of how they pray for each other each day.  We begin our day by sitting in a circle and doing a round robin prayer.  EVERY child is praying and often it is for the needs of others.  There is simply no better way to start the day!

Upcoming dates:

• Swimming lessons run from September 14-25.  We will be at the pool from 12:35-1:20 each day.
• School pictures will be on September 18.  Order forms for pictures and the yearbook went home today.  
• Homework folders will begin on Monday, September 14 along with reading minutes and spelling word work.  
• We will be taking the Discovery Test next week.  I plan on giving the Reading portion on Tuesday morning and the Math portion on Thursday.  Please make sure your child eats a good breakfast that morning and is ready to go.
• Walk-a-thon is September 23.  The students brought home information about this event this week.
• Book order forms went home today.  Simply click on the red Scholastic icon on the right of the blog if you would like to order any books.  I will submit the order on September 18.
• No School September 28 for Staff Development.

What we have been doing in 3rd Grade:

Bible:  We finished our unit on the book of Ephesians this week.  As we reviewed what we learned we created an Ephesians book to share with our families.  Your child brought this book home in their Friday folders and should be able to review the unit with you.  We will take a small assessment on this on Monday.  We have also been working at memorizing Psalm 8 as a class.  I will send home a copy of our Bible memory next week Monday in the homework folders so you can study at home with your child.

Math:  We looked at many story problems this week involving multiplication and division.  We are learning to read SLOWLY so we can figure out exactly what mathematical operation we need to use.  Many students are drawing pictures to help them solve the problem and that is great!  We added the 10's and 9's to our multiplication facts this week.

Science:  We are almost done with our rock tumbling and hopefully polished rocks will be coming home next week!  In class we did several experiments that taught us about particle size with different earth materials as well as how water reacts to different particle sizes.  A special thanks to the Bruxvoort family for providing the class with yummy ROCK candy on Friday!

Reading:  I love watching your children read.  Everyone finds a comfy spot in the room and gets right to work!  This week we focused on asking ourselves questions about our story as we read, making predictions, and also inferencing.  The students worked so hard and I am very proud of them.

Writing:  Our stamina is increasing in Writing every single day.  The students are continuing to try out different small moments (seed stories) that they may want to write about for a personal narrative.  We focused this week on adding details to our writing as we work as well as circling words that may be spelled incorrectly.  The favorite part of writing comes when a couple friends get to share what they wrote that day!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynae