September 16

The Walk-a-thon was a huge success!  What a great looking group of 3rd graders!  Thank you for your contributions to this event and to our school.  Our class raised the most money with over $2,100 so we have a pizza party coming our way!  I will let you know when that lunch is scheduled.

Upcoming Events/Reminders:

• Reading Minutes are due Monday.  Have your child add up his/her total minutes and get a parent signature from you.  The expectation is 125 minutes a week with at least 4 days of reading.
• Word Work will come home on Monday.  Our test is Friday.  Your child does practice these words each day at school but home practice is beneficial.
• Math homework will come home on Monday.  This is due back Friday.  An optional Math page will be made available to students on Wednesdays if they would like the extra practice.
• The purple homework folders need to go back and forth from home and school each day.  Your child writes his/her homework and any reminders in this folder.  We are working at becoming responsible for our homework as we grow.  :)
• Thank you to  Jana Rigterink for helping us in Library this week.
• I have our Scholastic Book Orders up and running!  Simply click on the red "Scholastic Book Order" link at the top of this blog to go straight to my website.  All books will be sent to me at school.  If you wish for these to be a gift for your child, please let me know.  I sent home a paper copy of this as well today.
• We can always use more Clorox Wipes. Thanks to all of you who are so faithfully keeping our room stocked with these.  

Curriculum Highlights:

Bible:  We continue to learn many important features of the Bible.  This week we looked up many special verses and began writing down ones that are important to us.  We are adding these to a bible ring so we can place these words in our hearts as we read them often.  We also learned how to use the concordance and footnotes in our Bible.

Reading:  The Discovery testing this week took much of our lesson time, but we did learn strategies on how to problem solve words that we do not understood.  Each day your child should be bringing his/her book home from school.  Everyone has a lot of book choices available in their book boxes and they are excited about what they are reading.

Writing:  We have read through all of our small moment stories and everyone has chosen a story that they want to start focusing on in depth.  In order to do this, we read with partners and tried to choose stories that we remembered with lots of detail.  We have created a timeline to place our story in sequential order and are starting to zoom in on a small moment for our focus.  

Math:  We are working so hard at multiplication and division!  This week we added our 9's and 3's and also starting adding variables into our math equations.  All of Math involves careful reading of story problems and slow work as we draw pictures to help us understand what is being asked.  

Science:  Our rock tumbler is a huge hit in our 3rd grade classroom and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if many of your kids ask for one of these for Christmas!  Besides learning about rock polishing this week, we also focused on particle size with earth materials when mixed with water.

Enjoy homecoming weekend at HC!
Lynae