Can you believe that we have just finished our 3rd full week of school and others don’t even start until Tuesday? Think of all the educational and social growth your kids have had a chance to develop in that time. It’s really amazing to watch it first hand.
This week the 3rd graders had a great time. In reading they worked on Reading to a Partner. They learned to sit next to each other, take turns reading, use very quiet voices (so nobody else can hear), and being supportive of different reading abilities. It was wonderful to watch them work so well together.
“Time After Time”, yes I could be talking about the great Cyndi Lauper song, but actually I want to review whats been going on in math this week. We have been continuing to work on telling time. This week it was elapsed time. So for example, if I want a pizza delivered at 7:30 pm and the pizza shop says it will take 39 minutes to get there, what time should I order it? Third graders worked on a variety of problems like this, some where the start time was unknown and others where the duration or the end time were not known. This unit contained a lot of hands on learning and everyone did a great job with it.
This week we had the first Green Assembly of the school year. This months focus is Wellness. Third and fourth graders were responsible for teaching the school about environmental wellness. So our class made a couple of posters. One was about conserving water and the other about conserving energy. We selected two students to use the microphone and share with the school a few ideas for each poster. They did a great job!
If you get a chance to come into the building make sure to take a look at our prairie artwork. Outside of Mrs. McGovern’s classroom we have a giant poster of the Illinois prairie. All of the plants, animals, and insects were researched and created by your children. Many are life-size and they are awesome. Some kids did plants that grow to 10 feet tall and have 12 feet of roots. So guess who climbed a ladder to make sure all 10 feet were on display? Yep, I wanted to ensure that everyone got their artwork up, so I climbed, reached, and used a yardstick to reach to the top!
We did our first Quiet Spot this week too. For this, we took a nice walk along the path in Prairie Crossing, found a place to sit, and then wrote and drew about what we saw in our space. This week we saw a pear tree loaded with overripe pears, milkweed bugs on milkweed plants, lovely prairie flowers, and a good number of bees! To me, this is one of my favorite things we do at PC. I would love the opportunity to sit in nature and take it all in, but watching your kids do it and taking a few pictures of them is almost as good!
PE was really fun this week. They played a game of human Rocks-Paper-Scissors in which they faced off with a partner and both had to jump into either a rock (crouch down), paper (jump up and splay arms and legs), or scissors (put your arms in front of you and move them in a scissor pattern). Then the same rules apply. In this case there were 3 stations, so as you won or loss you would go up or down to the stations. This meant that there was no standing around, everyone was in constant motion. The kids loved this game and it can easily be done everywhere, so make sure to ask them about it. Mr. Flynn also had them play a game about the problem of the lack of trees. It completely tied into our science curriculum and everyone had so much fun. Kids were trees, squirrels, foxes, and lumberjacks! And they were running around like crazy. Make sure to ask your kids about that game too!
And finally, recess was a blast. The third graders are having a great time playing together at recess. Some play gaga ball, others pretend to be Harry Potter, baseball games break out, kids swing on swings, kids swing on bars, they build and take apart the forts, but the key is that they all have fun. It is one of my favorite parts of the day! Some of us added a bit of water to the garden during recess too.
That’s enough for this week, I hope you enjoy your 3 day weekend and have a nice time at curriculum night next week!
~ Mrs. Steinbeck