This blog's purpose is to keep you informed on the day-to-day happenings of our classroom. It's also a place where you can communicate with me. So please leave a comment, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
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Thanks again to Mrs. Truman and Mrs. Lenz for a great art project. We have some interesting looking spiders on the bulletin board outside our room. Come by and see them soon.
Don't forget our Halloween party will be right after the school parade which starts at 1:15. Thanks to Mrs. Axtell for lining everything up.
Conference times will go home on Tuesday.
Have a good weekend!
Homework is spelling practice.
Tomorrow morning we're looking forward to another art lesson with Mrs. Truman. You'll have to check out the results on the bulletin board in the hallway during conference week. And speaking of conference, the confimation notes should be going home next week. Leave me a comment here if you have a time and day in mind.
Congratulations to the 2005 World Series Champions Chicago White Sox. Now what's on tv?
Get ready to start turning in those Pizza Hut minutes to receive your free personal pan pizza.
Have a good night.
Homework tonight is another math page practicing area. The students now know that they can multiply one side by the other side to find the area. I also asked the students to write 5-10 Halloween/Fall words on the back of their homework so we can use them to make our Boogo game boards for our party. Speaking of our party, it will start on Monday as soon as we return to our room from the parade. The parade begins a 1:15.
In social studies we learned about the Yurok Indians who lived in the forests. Resources were much easier to come by than it was for the Navajo. We focused on what an economy is and learned that the Yurok traded with their neighbors and used tooth shells as money.
This afternoon we learned how to write a paragraph. Third graders have a hard time learning to indent the first sentence and then keeping the rest of them on the margin.
It might be all over the Astros tonight. Hopefully they'll pull one out and keep the Series going. Have a good night.
Tonight's homework is a math page practicing area. The students seemed to understand area well this morning. Let me know how they do at home with it.
In social studies we learned about the Navajo Indians life in the desert. We learned how they had to adapt to that harsh envirnoment and how important religion is to their culture. Ask your child to tell you one way the Navajo adapted to the desert environment.
This afternoon we read about several plants that eat insects. Ask your child to tell you about one of those.
We ended the day practicing subjects of sentences. We also experienced our first fire drill of the year.
Game 3 is tonight. I'm hoping the Astros can win and make it more interesting. Enjoy your evening.
Homework tonight is a spelling page.
Our crayfish now have little homes in their habitats. We're going to be observing them this week to discover if they're territorial. Ask your child what he/she thinks about that idea.
In math today we worked on finding the perimeter of various geometric shapes.
No baseball tonight, just Monday Night Football. Enjoy!
It's Friday, so no homework!
Check out a couple of papers that went home tonight. One is a great idea for a safe Halloween right here in our parking lot called "Trunk or Treat." The other one is a pink page about the school directory. If you don't want to have your number in the directory, then you need to sign the pink page and send it back with your child.
I'm looking forward to watching the start of the World Series tomorrow night. I like both teams, but for some reason I find myself rooting for the Astros. I guess I like the ex-Yankees on the team. Anyway, Go Astros!
Homework tonight is to edit the important event writing that we've been working on. If you feel it also needs some revising then please do that as well. Some of the students are on to the final draft stage. If that's the case just make sure their editing process was done well.
I've got to run to a parent-teacher conference for my boy, so see you tomorrow.
Homework tonight is a math page. Your child will need to roam around measuring three things in your home. Have fun and try to get them to measure as accurately as possible (up to a quarter inch). We do emphasize using the word "about" in measuring.
Whew! We tried revising our important event writing today. Some of them took it home to continue. Revising is a difficult process for third graders. We were emphasizing adding vivid details (remember last night's homework?), proper sequence, using "I" and "me", and adding some feeling words. Third graders have a difficult time adding feeling words to their writing like "I was scared."
We looked at crayfish behavior in science. Ask your child what he/she observed.
Enjoy your evening. Go Astros!
Homework tonight is a little unusual. It's a writing page practicing elaborating sentences. Hopefully it will translate into the personal event that we're writing about in class. Ask your child how his/her rough draft went today.
In math we learned to measure to the nearest quarter inch. Don't worry if your child is having a little trouble identifying the quarter inch mark, it will take some more practice. If you have a tape measure at home and are looking for a brief break, hand it to your child and let them measure items around the house. We also measured some segments in centimeters.
We looked at Mexico City in social studies today and learned that people not only use natural resources but they also change their environment. Sometimes the changes are good and sometimes they're not so good as is the case with pollution. Mexico City is trying to clean up the pollution in their city.
The Seahawks now lead the Rams by two games! Enjoy your evening.
Homework tonight is a math page of measurement. No spelling this week because we're in between units. This week we'll take reading and grammar tests and focus on a writing project. We're going to write about an important event. Today we brainstormed ideas and started writing down some of the details of that event. Ask your child what event he/she chose.
We finally met the crayfish today for science. We observed their various structures and even found out how to tell the males from females. Ask your child for the details!
As you can tell from the homework our new chapter in math is on measurments. Today we learned the importance of standard units. Ask your child what problem we encountered with "shoe" measurements.
Great Monday Night Football game tonight. If the Colts beat the Rams the Seahawks will have a two game lead in the west. Go Colts! 
It's a busy night and I need to get going, but I got to pass on one bit of exciting news. Today a Tech guy brought down our digital presentation tool. You'll have to come in and see it sometime. It displays whatever is underneath unto a screen, so it will be great for science demonstrations, math, cursive writing, you name it.
No homework and enjoy your day off of school tomorrow. 
Tomorrow is our Friday, so homework tonight is spelling practice.
We reviewed chapter two in math and started the test. We'll finish it tomorrow and do our projects.
Ask your child about our bean plants in science. Next week we meet the crayfish!
We ended the day with more practice on making our writing more interesting. We rewrote the sentence "The boy ran across the yard," and made in more interesting. Ask your child how he/she made the subject more interesting.
Have a good night.
No jury duty today. I'm hoping I've escaped for the week and will be back tomorrow.
Homework tonight is a tough math page. We've been practicing the "Trade First" subtraction algorithm. I hope your child can successfully make the trades tonight.
This afternoon we worked on making our sentences more interesting by writing clear subjects. Instead of writing "The lion sat on the rock." We wrote "The little lion cub sat on the rock."
Enjoy your evening.
I'm back, but I don't know if I'll be back again tommorrow. I'm on jury duty until Friday, so each night after 5:30 I have to check to see if my number is selected to report the next day. I'm hoping I'll be here all week, but I'm at the mercy of the court.
We had a good Monday. We started a difficult topic in math today: trade-first subtraction. Look for a homework page later this week.
Tonight's homework is spelling practice. The bonus words for this week are cologne and delicate.
I've got some catching up to do. Enjoy your evening.
I'm beat. I listened to evidence until 5:00 today. I'm looking forward to getting back in the classroom as soon as possible and returning to my normal routine. I'm glad the students are in good hands with Mrs. Owens. They're going about all the curriculum in fine style.
Hope to see everyone soon.
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