Happy Holidays

Here I am sitting in my favorite chair.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Great Performance

All of the third graders performed on Friday at the assembly with their recorders.

Merry Strikes Again

This time... Not so bad.  She just got all of her new snowman friends together for a story.

Art Project

During a meeting when Mrs. Borman was gone, the students drew these adorable reindeer.  Come and see them on the bulletin board outside of our classroom.  We are having an assembly on Friday where all the third grade students will be performing with their recorders.  The assembly is in the gym at 1:25!

Naughty Merry!

We came in this morning to see Merry swinging from the glass sculpture!  Mrs. Borman was really unhappy about it and Merry had to go in time-out.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

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What's on your Mind?

Check out our brains.  We are working hard in third grade to make our brains even stronger!

Snowman Name

Here you go class!  What's your snowman name?  Tinkle McSnowflake!  Really?

Special Visitor

Yesterday we received a special delivery.  Merry, the elf, is in our class.  The kids are helping her write a diary about what is going on in our room this week.  Be on the lookout for her adventures.  Hopefully she's a good girl!  Today...not so good!

Project Snowman

We had a great time making our snowmen.  Thank you all for sending in all the supplies!  Today we made a name tag for them and also created at "Flake"book profile page.  So cute!

Pieces of our Community

We entered an art contest this week.  Students worked together to make pictures of a safe community.  The final product is going to the police precinct.  The winning class in Portland will get to eat lunch with the chief of police!  Here is our attempt.

Eraser Characters

Last week we finished reading a book called Max's Logbook by Marissa Moss.  In that story, the main character, Max, enjoyed drawing on his erasers and writing comics about them.  So in class each student got two erasers to make characters for some future stories.  I can't guarantee that erasers at home will not have faces on them in the future!  Be on the lookout for your child's story about the eraser people!

Sugar Cone Christmas Trees

In writing class the students are learning how to write functional pieces.  Their first how-to paper was a recipe to make Snow Cone Christmas Trees.  They had to follow the directions and make the tree without help from me.  They did a great job and now might have a new tradition to start at home every year!  Thank you to all the parents who sent in supplies to make this happen!

Capture the Moment

Last month we had a special visitor from the Portland Japanese Garden come and visit our classroom.  Ms. Kvitka brought in pictures from previous calendars of the garden representing all of the seasons.  Students were given a picture and used all five senses to write down words describing the picture.  We will be going back to the gardens in spring and taking photos to capture moments to write a haiku about.  Be sure to use your free pass to visit the garden.  It's beautiful year-round!

Pumpkin Math

We had a great time last week in math class working with pumpkins!  We estimated the circumference, height, width, and number of pumpkin seeds.  Then the students actually measured and counted all the seeds.  We had a lot of seeds in those small pumpkins! 

Mr. Bare Bones

Dr. Borman came for a visit today with a skeleton from his school.  He showed the students the different bones and talked about the two types of sockets.  Students really enjoyed the demonstration and had a lot of interesting questions.  Thanks for visiting us!

Math is so Sweet!

Today students were learning about making bar graphs.  We used Smarties to create our data and write a frequency table.  Then students created bar graphs using their data. YUM!

What is Light?

Our new theme in reading is What is Light?  Today we enjoyed reading using our flashlights and our vocabulary word, "beam".  The kids had a great time reading!

Good Bye September

These are all of the calendar pieces we learned about for September.  There are so many ways we use measurement in our every day lives.  Be sure to point out to your child when you are using a measurement tool and explain how it works.

Never Give UP!

2013-2014 School Year has Begun!

Welcome to the new school year!  We have been going strong for 8 days now.  This is a picture of all the students (31) in our room...at least our shrinky dinks.  What a nice class!  Unfortunately, we have all been suffering from extreme heat in the classroom.  The highest it has been was 88 degrees.  Hopefully it will cool off soon and we can be much more comfortable in class.  Please make sure your child has all the school supplies.  We are starting our learning right away and use the supplies daily. 

Classroom Party

This past Monday we stayed after school until 7:00 p.m. for an after school class party.  Thank you to all the families that brought food and items for our party.  The students had a great time!

Capturing the Moment-Japanese Garden Field Trip

Last week we went for the second time to the Portland Japanese Gardens.  We enjoyed a beautiful morning of walking around with clipboards and cameras capturing moments using our five senses.  Miss Joan came to our classroom this week with the photos that the students took and each child wrote a Haiku using a picture for inspiration.  I can't wait to see our published book! 

Geometry is Fun!

This is the song that I taught the class about angles!  Enjoy!

Nature Movie

This one was published by Tyler S. and Bryce. 

A Day with an Astronaut

Here is a short video made by Jessica and Mary.  They practiced the script and performed it using the Sock Puppet app.  Enjoy!

Portland Japanese Garden Haiku

Yesterday we had two special guests come to our class.  Students learned how to write a haiku poem using all 5 senses.  They also were taught how to take a picture and use the zoom lens on a camera.  We will be taking one more field trip to the gardens in the spring to take pictures and write some Haiku poems, which will be published in a book.

Measurement is Fun!

In math class we have been learning about measurement.  This lesson was about volume.  We were deciding which containers could fit one liter in them.  The questions we worked on were if we thought it would be less than a liter, about a liter, or more than a liter.

Science Fair

Last week our class participated in the Science Fair in the gym at Russell.  Mostly it was the 4th graders who created boards with projects they have been working on.  We did an experiment as a class and made one board.  We had class representatives to go and answer questions and talk about our experiment.  It was really fun to see everyone's hard work!

Story Time!

Please enjoy this book as it's narrated by our very own James!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

We had a great Thursday celebrating Dr. Seuss's life.  Our students rose to the challenge of reading at least 15 books written by Dr. Seuss.  We enjoyed green eggs and ham for lunch and then were able to listen to teachers read different Dr. Seuss books.  We even got to hear different languages!  It was a great day!

Austen's New Blog

Our very own Austen has created his own blog!  Click here to go visit it and leave comments!

So Cute

Last week we read a nonfiction book about Panda bears.  Here is a cute video of a mother panda and her baby.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!  Remember, no school on Monday, but bring your math homework on Tuesday!!

First Place Winner!

Our very own Colin placed 1st place in the 8-9 year old category in the Elk's Hoop Shoot Contest today.  He will move on to compete at the district level!  Kylani also participated in the contest today.  They both showed great sportsmanship and fabulous attitudes.  Way to go!  Russell is so proud!  Also, a huge thank you to Coach Jill for encouraging our students to participate!  Thank you!

Fractions

This week we started learning about fractions.  Today we did people fractions.  Two-thirds of the students were girls in this picture!  We had a fun time with fractions.  You could have your child practice fractions on IXL.  Reading recipes is also a great way to work on fractions with your family.  So get cooking!

Special Guest Teacher

On Wednesday we had a special visitor from the Portland Japanese Gardens.  She taught the class about Japan and we used our 5 senses to think about RAIN.  She will be visiting our class two more times.  In the spring, we will be going back to the Japanese Gardens to take pictures to inspire writing Haiku poetry.

Speeches

Here some more pictures of the students before winter break giving their how-to speeches.