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Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!
Click here to play a Halloween Safety game!
It's another busy night, so I'll make this quick. No official homework tonight. Use the time tonight to check on your child's writing project (they should be working on their final draft), practice our Fall/Halloween spelling words, or practice addition subtraction facts. Don't forget you can begin turning in Pizza Hut minutes tomorrow. If you've lost the calendar, then just write me a note stating that your child has read at least 300 minutes during the month of October.
This afternoon we worked hard on our second Social Studies test. We're still waiting for the curriculum's resource book to copy the tests out of, so we again had to make our own (Mrs. Laughary made this one for us). So tonight's homework is to go over the test with your child and help them with the tough parts. It's okay to use the book to find the answers (that's an important skill that third grades have a difficult time with).
Will the Sox bring out the brooms tonight?
For math today we learned about perimeter. We made triangles, squares, and rectangles out of stravs and measured their perimeters. It was good practice.
After finishing up our reading tests for the week, we revised our rough drafts of our "Favorite Places." Students worked in teams and offered each other advice on ways to improve their writing. The students then worked on editing for mistakes. Tomorrow we'll start our final drafts for you to see during conferences.
Speaking of conferences, please let me know if the time I chose will work for you. If it doesn't, just let me know and I'll get in touch with you soon to reschedule.
Homework tonight is a math page of home measuring. We've been measuring all over our room in inches and centimeters. We've also been working on the relationships of inches, feet, and yards as well as millimeters, centimeters, and meters. Ask your child if he/she knows how many inches in a foot or yard.
We started rough drafts of our "Favorite Places" today. Tomorrow we will seek to make them even better by revising and editing.
This afternoon we measured our bean seedlings that are growing hydroponically. We plan to measure them each week up until Christmas time. We hope by then they'll be seeding, and then we can discuss the life cycle. The plant the seed came from started from a seed as well. Pretty cool! Thanks to Mrs. Rausch for creating our support "fence" for our little seedlings.
Look for the note that went home tonight concerning the Halloween party on Friday. Ours will start at 1:30 after last recess. Feel free to stop by and help us eat all our treats.
Will the Red Sox make it three in a row tonight?
Homework tonight is a special spelling page. Due to testing this week, we don't have an official spelling list so we create our own. The students like our list, and we'll take our final test on Friday morning as usual.
We started writing a paragraph on our favorite place. Today we made a four square and tomorrow we'll write a rough draft. Ask your child about his/her favorite place.
We'll have our second social studies test on Wednesday that will cover landforms and resources. Tomorrow for science we'll begin measuring our bean plants and go over a recent test. The crayfish are coming soon!
We will be having a Halloween party on Friday afternoon. If you would like to help out, contact Mrs. Yarbrough. I'm hoping to keep Friday morning as typical as possible. Students may change into costumes after lunch.
Ask your child about where are seedlings are now. Ask how are plants will continue to grow in the water.
Ask about the pitcher plants we made today and what's so unusual about them.
Ask about what we read in our Time for Kids magazine today.
Ask where they spent recess today.
Ask who's going to win the World Series.
Enjoy your weekend!
Sorry, it's all those math tests...
Homework tonight is a spelling practice page.
I've got a lot of work to do, so really quick...Homework tonight is a math page from our new chapter on measuring.
Enjoy game seven tonight!
We took our second math test today. I hope to have it corrected by Friday. Tomorrow we begin chapter 3 on measuring.
We continued practicing making the subjects of our sentences more interesting and clearer. The sentences we wrote today are much better than what we wrote a couple of weeks ago. We went from "The deer drank water," to "The six-point buck drank water from the river."
This afternoon in science we looked at the new structures that developed on the bean seedlings. We identified the roots, stem, and leaves. We discussed "germination" and compared the structures of different seeds to see how they were alike and different.
Homework is noun practice.
Can Shilling save the Red Sox one more night?
Homework is spelling practice.
We practiced adding three or more addends in math today. We emphasized looking for a ten when we started adding.
In writing we continued to work on making the subjects of our sentences more interesting.
This afternoon we learned about map grids, observed our seeds, and took our spelling pretest.
I'll be rooting against the Rams tonights, but I'm afraid the Bucs won't be able to give them much of a contest in St. Louis.
Enjoy your evening!
It's Friday so there's no homework.
We practiced our math algorithms, read about the election, took our final test in spelling, made a cute paper pumpkin thanks to Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Clevenger, observed our sprouting seeds, and saw the largest yellow jacket nest ever! Man was that thing huge. It must have taken those evil creatures years to make it. I'm looking up at our classroom's 27 inch TV and, no kidding, it was almost as big!
Enjoy your weekend! The poor Seahawks play in Foxborro which means their playing the best team in football - the Patriots. I'll be rooting for the Hawks, but I don't think they're going to come out on the winning side. Go Seahawks anyway!
Homework tonight is a spelling page in preparation for tomorrow's test.
Also going home tonight are your child's photographs, social studies postcard, and all the information you need to participate in this fall's fund raiser.
Ask your child about our science lesson today. We had a good time measuring how much water the lima beans soaked up and identifying three parts of a bean.
During math we practiced trading first before we subtracted any numbers. The last two days have been much tougher and we plan on doing some more practice tomorrow.
Have a good night.
Homework tonight is a math page of partial sums problems. Hopefully you're child won't have any problem showing you how to use that algorithm.
I've got to get over to my desk and fill out the conference schedule right now. If you have a request for a conference day let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email. Conferences this year are Novemeber 5, 8, and 9 (the ninth has evening conferences!).
Homework tonight is a math page of the comparison diagram we used to solve problems today. The diagrams have been very helpful but they do require more practice.
For writing we talked about exclamations and commands. We learned that commands end in a period and exclamations end in an exclamation mark of course.
We enjoyed another science lesson this afternoon. Today we started an experiment to see if the four seeds we had (peas, bean, sunflower, and popcorn) will begin to grow using only water. Each group set up its own sprouter, and we also have a class sprouter that we'll be checking on each day. Each student has a Sprouting Seed observation page on which to record his/her daily observations. Ask your child how their seed is doing in the coming days.
Great ballgame tonight! The Yankees vs. Red Sox series should be as exciting, or more so, than last year. I know I'm suppose to root for those poor, cursed Red Sox, but I just can't seem to root against the Yankees. It's got to be a carry over from my childhood. Sorry about that!
Enjoy your evening!
I don't want to talk about the Seahawks...it still hurts too bad! 
Homework tonight is a spelling page to begin practicing the new set of words.
In math we continued to focus on word problems with a nifty diagram to help in story problems that involve a change from the beginning to the end. I'll try to send home a math homework page tomorrow so you can see what I'm talking about.
We talked about characters in reading and finally finished our social studies postcards.
This afternoon we watched Mrs. Cushman win the EWU/Q6 Teacher of the Month award. Congratulations, Mrs. Cushman. Our own Dylan nominated her last year. You can see both of them on Q6 at 6:00 tonight.
We also met a student from Whitworth, Miss Powers, who will be coming in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to observe and help us out.
New science lesson tomorrow!
We had our Friday today. We continued our projects in math (length of daylight and the difference between the national high and low temperature) and took our final test in spelling. We also finished all the SOAR tests. It takes awhile to get them graded and if your child qualifies for the program you'll hear about it before I do. I hope we have the results back before conferences.
This afternoon we enjoyed the video of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are seven books in the whole series, and they're all very good. If you like to read aloud to your children, you might want to check out the whole series.
I added a link to Foss science to the left. If you go there click on "Structures of Life" and you can explore what we're up to in science. We'll do Part 2 of Investigation 1 on Tuesday afternoon.
The Seahawks host the Rams on Sunday. The Rams have won the west the last several years. The Seahawks need to show them there's a new number one in town with a victory. I'll pick the Hawks to show them whose boss!
Enjoy your three day weekend.
Tonight's homework is a spelling page. Don't forget our final test will be tomorrow since Friday is a Curriculum Day.
We started science today! It was a good lesson on fruits and seeds. The students got to cut open several fruits (ask your child the definition of a fruit) and count the seeds inside. They also listed properties of the seed and drew a picture. I hope tomorrow to add a link to the Foss website so you can get even more details.
We'll finish SOAR testing tomorrow!
Well, I missed one for the first time this season. The Chiefs played well and I was glad to see them get out of the hole.
Tonight's homework will show you what we did in math today. Your children should be able to use their knowledge of addition and subtraction to complete the "What's My Rule" tables.
We started our SOAR testing today with two verbal tests. The students seemed pretty confident about their performance.
In the afternoon we worked on our social studies postcards. We'll be done easily by Thursday.
Have a good night.
The math lesson today was pretty hard as we extended our addition and subtraction facts. Since we know that 4 + 6 = 10, then we should be able to figure out that 74 + 6 = 80. Likewise if 14 - 8 = 6, then 74 - 8 = 64. We're going to need more practice.
For writing/social studies today, we started creating a postcard from one of the regions of the U.S. Each student chose a region (west, central, or east) and pretended to visit that location. The postcard then should describe what landforms were seen. We should be done by Thursday and then we'll trade with Mrs. Laughary class.
We finished the day with our spelling pretest, and as usual, our homework tonight is a spelling page. Don't forget there's no school on Friday, so our final spelling test will be on Thursday morning.
Also don't forget that we start SOAR testing tomorrow morning.
It should be a good MNF game tonight. It's a tough one to pick. The Chiefs are 0-3 and a loss tonight will all but finish any playoff hopes they have. The Ravens are 2-1 and have high hopes for the playoffs as well, but they have some problems with their star running back. The Ravens are at home so I'll play it safe and pick the Ravens to put the Chiefs in a huge hole.
Enjoy your evening. Baseball playoffs start tomorrow!
Here are the highlights of our day:
# We discovered there is 11 hours and 39 minutes of daylight today.
# It was 95 degrees in Phoenix on Wednesday and 24 degrees in Hibbing Minnesota for a difference of 71 degrees.
# Did you know there's new museum in Washington D.C.? Ask your child what it is (hint: it was in our TFK magazine).
# Ask your child if he/she can spell "least".
# We finished The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe today. We'll start James and the Giant Peach on Monday.
# The Fertile Valley Grange gave us free dictionaries today!
# I sent another book order home yesterday. Please send in your orders by Thursday, October 7. No school for students on Friday of next week!
# Look for a letter in your child's notebook concerning our SOAR program. We start SOAR testing next week.
The Seahawks have a bye this week so no football pick. Enjoy your weekend!
Tomorrow our spelling test, so tonight's homework is a spelling practice page.
In math we started a new chapter focusing on addition and subtraction facts. Today we created fact families, so it's time to start brushing up on those facts while you're driving into Spokane. Tomorrow we hope to cut out a bunch of fact triangles for students to use in practicing.
Several papers went home tonight: one from our P.E. teacher, one from the superintendent, new lunch/breakfast menu, and a yellow Pizza Hut Book-It reading calendar. Book-It starts tomorrow. Your child should be able to tell you how the program operates. Our goal for October is 300 minutes which averages out to less than 10 minutes a night. When your child meets his/her goal at the end of the month, sign the calendar (or any piece of paper) and send it to school, and I'll be happy to present them with their free personal pan pizza coupon!
Enjoy your reading!
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