First week fun
Friday Journal Report
First day!
We had a good first day as we started to get to know each other, learned about classroom rules and procedures, decorated our people for our bulletin board, learned how our classroom library works, and enjoyed our first DEAR time of the year!
week 1 Sentinel
Happy Summer!
As promised, here is a list of suggested websites to help your child review all the skills they learned during the year over the summer:
http://www.fcrr.org/resources/resources_sca.html (Great printable activities to practice language arts skills for a more formal practice.)
http://www.ixl.com/ (Math and language arts by grade level. You can do a small amount daily for free!)
http://www.wartgames.com/ (games for all subjects)
http://littlebirdtales.com/index/default/errors[]/AUTH_REQ/ (children can create on-line story books)
http://jmathpage.com/ (math)
http://sheppardsoftware.com/ (all subjects)
http://illuminations.nctm.org/ (math)
http://playkidsgames.com/ (all subjects)
http://roythezebra.com/ (language arts)
http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/ (printable activities for all subjects)
http://www.spellingcity.com/ (spelling, vocabulary- use their pre-made lists or search for Mrs. Janetzke to find my lists from our spelling curriculum)
http://www.funbrain.com/ (all subjects)
http://read.cph.org/ (Family summer reading program)
http://www.brainpopjr.com/ (Game Up link has free access to all the games from the videos and also links to other on-line games.)
http://www.aaamath.com/ (Math by grade levels.)
http://edhelper.com/ (all subjects)
http://www.readwritethink.org/ (parent activities for summer/home practice in reading and writing)
Have a wonderful summer and God's blessings in 3rd grade!!
End of year fun!
Our last read-aloud for the year was Charlotte's Web. We enjoyed watching the movie on the last full day of school and making spider cookies to enjoy as our afternoon treat!
Magnets for Breakfast
We set out to explore the question, "will magnets stick to my breakfast cereal?" We went through several steps to break down the cereal and test to see if it was really magnetic or just maybe we were seeing static electricity. We smushed the cereal, put it in hot water, mushed it around some more, and let it sit for an hour. Finally, we were able to find small black particles that attracted to the magnet which we knew must be iron! We learned that we do need iron in our foods to help us stay strong and that certain cereals are fortified with iron, such as Total or Smart Start.
Fractured Fairy Tale Commercials
To end our year in Reading, we first reviewed traditional fairy tales. Then, we learned about all the different and fun ways that you can take a traditional tale and fracture, or break, it! We explored many different fractures then each chose our own. We each did a book report on it to compare it to the original, give the problem, solution, and story plot of the fracture, and then identify how it was fractured (characters, setting, point of view, good/evil characters, story elements...) Finally, we each wrote our own book commercial to persuade others to read/not read our book and created props, practiced with extras, and performed our commercial for our classmates!
Royal Run and Field Day
May the FORCE be with you!
To end our Science unit of force and motion, we experimented with magnets. We discovered that magnets are only attracted to metals that contain iron. We then had fun playing with a bunch of magnet activities to see how many tricks we could do!
Rube Goldberg projects
Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist in the early 1900's who specialized in drawing complicated contraptions to do a simple task. Today, people enjoy trying to build some of the cartoons he drew, as well as design their own Rube Goldberg type projects. Our task was to create a complex way of throwing away a wad of paper. The goal was to have 5 chain-reaction elements as well as 3 simple machines. The only human interaction allowed was at the start. Each group worked through the design process to dream of, draw, build, test, re-design, test some more, and evaluate their project. Here are some pictures of the process!
Force and Motion presentation
We had a scientist from Fermilab come and give a presentation on force and motion and we got to experiment with Newton's Laws of Motion.
Week 37 Sentinel
Fire Station trip
Since Bethany has adopted Station 8 as a house which we routinely show our appreciation for, each class does a thank you project for the fire fighters every year. This year we assembled fire fighter survival kits with some candy, a note of appreciation, and a special card made by each student. We delivered the kits when we toured the station. We enjoyed seeing the truck and learning about all the special tools they have to do their jobs. We each got to climb through the truck and 1 lucky student even got to put on the gear!
Prefixes and Suffixes word work
Measuring Force and Motion
We did an experiment to see how an object's mass effected how much force we need to use to move the object. We measured this by seeing where we pulled the rubber band to when the book began to move. We tested our Religion book and our Reading book.
