Happy Holidays!

The kids enjoyed a great week of skating. Mr. Henderson had three separate game stations set up so  that the students could work on specific skating skills. Thank you to all of our parents who came to help tie skates or were brave enough to get on the ice with the kids.

We spent Monday and Tuesday reviewing our unit in Math. The students wrote their tests on Thursday and went through corrections as a class on Friday. We will start fresh and begin our new unit in January!

The students demonstrated their artistic abilities during cookie decorating!

In Language Arts, we worked on possessive nouns. Students then paired up to make riddles.

Our students exchanged Christmas cards with our buddy class, 1K!

Exciting news!!! Santa replied to our letters and is looking forward to dropping off presents on Christmas Eve. The students had an opportunity to read them out loud to the class so that they could share some of Santa's responses.

Sean arrived safely home from India. He came to visit us this week and brought a few stories and special items back with him.

He also brought back letters from a group of children in India. Our class was so excited to receive replies.

In Science, we experimented with rulers and sound. We found out that sound is the result of vibrations. The students could demonstrate that the larger vibrations created louder sounds. We also identified different pitches from different rates of vibration.























On Friday, we enjoyed a delicious holiday brunch. Thank you to everyone who brought food for us to enjoy together!

Congratulations to our new "Student of the Week"!

Glitter and Glam!!!

Students were decked out in their best "Glitter and Glam" outfits!

The Grade 3 classes were fortunate enough to meet with author, Nicole Brook, from Leduc. She has recently launched the first two books of her new series "The Amazing Adventures of Abigail Andrews". She talked to the students about following through with their dreams... "DREAM IT, BELIEVE IT, WORK AT IT". The visit also included each student going home with a signed copy of one of her new books. A new book will be coming out in September and one of our lucky students may have the opportunity to be a character! The students have been asked to go home and write an adventure story of their own. These can be brought to school in January and we will submit them to her. Mrs. Brook is looking for a ton of creativity. The winner of this story writing contest will be a character in her new book. 

This week, we wrote letters to Santa. Students learned the proper format of letter writing. The letters were mailed to the North Pole and we hope to hear back from him and his elves shortly. The Grade 3's had a lot of very interesting questions for Santa to answer!

We also had our turn to add to the school wide shared story. Every class had the opportunity to continue a story that was passed on from class to class. We used the picture below as inspiration. The completed adventure will be read to the school at next week's assembly.

We wrapped up our second unit in Math, "Numbers to 1000". We will be doing a review assignment on Monday and Tuesday. Their review and work will be sent home and a test will be given on Thursday. 

We have been using the Chrome books a lot this year and feel that it would be beneficial for the students to learn some keyboarding skills. They started working on a program from the Black Gold website.  They were so eager to start learning about home row and proper finger placement. No more plucking at keys in 3FT!

Congratulations to our new "Student of the Week"!

Christmas Concert Week....

On December 1st, the class enjoyed a special pancake breakfast and decorated our class Christmas tree.

We performed our Christmas Concert on Tuesday night and the kids did a fabulous job! Our theme was "warm Christmas". They played ukuleles along to the song "Lime in the Coconut" and they sang "Feliz Navidad".

In math we have been skip counting by 3's and 4's. The students have been identifying and describing patterns, looking at the relationship between 2 elements. They have been applying pattern rules to extend patterns and they have been illustrating skip counting patterns on number lines and hundreds charts.

This week we also worked on estimating groups of objects less than 1000. Students used referents, such as 10 pennies, in order to estimate the quantity of pennies in a larger pile.

"An estimate is a thoughtful guess that is close to the number you would have if you counted all the objects" Math Makes Sense (Pearson).


We also taught the kids a couple of Stratedice games using the Box Car and One-Eyed Jack math game sets.

The students enjoyed "Making Words". This is an activity where the students use scrambled letters to build words of varying lengths. The letters are then organized together to spell one larger word. The "mystery word" was DECORATE!

We finished our last story from the first Collections series. The students did an activity on using quotation marks.

In Science, we finished our "Listening Walk" activity outside.

BRRRRRRRRRR!

This week in Language Arts we read a few selections from the "Collections" series, Billy's World and The Day They Saved Her Majesty. The students wrote "Free Verse" poems about Winter. Students were asked to use descriptive words to help the reader visualize what they love about the season. They also practiced the weekly spelling words by making word searches for their classmates. We continue to work on the "All About Me|" project. Most of the students are working on publishing their writing.

In Math, we used coins to skip count by 5s, 10s, 25s, and 100s. They were also required to use coins to represent the same number in many different ways. Practicing with money at home would be very beneficial. Example...Collect coins of different amounts and ask your child to show you three different ways to make $3.25. You can also ask them to count coins for you and tell you the amount it adds up to.












We have been learning about customs and traditions in India. Students have learned about different clothing that is worn by both women and men. We also talked about the different festivals and holidays celebrated in India. Instruments were a part of this discussion and we had the opportunity to learn how to play the "Singing Bowl".

We have started our new unit in Science, called "Hearing and Sound". Student worked on their title pages this week. They were asked to draw and label three of their favorite sounds. We also read a story called "The Listening Walk" by Paul Showers. Students were then asked to complete an assignment while doing their own "listening walk" inside the school. We will complete the "listening walk" outside, when the weather warms up next week.

In Art, we are working on a special, top secret project. Sorry, we can not give any information or add pictures of our art this week!

We have taken a pledge to be a part of the Energize Oil Country program, put on by the Edmonton Oilers. Students have pledged to complete 60 minutes of activity every day. Most of this will be done at school through recess, Healthy Hearts and Phys Ed. Students have been asked to keep track of their activity at home, to make up for minutes we do not complete at school. They are responsible for filling in and keeping up with their activity logs. The grand prize is class tickets to an Oilers game in March. We are competing with around 200 classrooms around the Edmonton area. Every two weeks, the Oilers will send us a special challenge. If we complete it, our names will be placed into a draw for additional prizes. The first challenge was to send a picture of our class signing the pledge poster. Here we are...we painted an Oiler's sign, wore our class Energize Oil  Country t-shirts and we are ready to play floor hockey. Don't forget to check out our Student of the Week as our class goalie. :)

Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!

REMINDERS FOR NEXT WEEK!!! Our Christmas Concert is next Tuesday at 7pm. Your child can come directly to our classroom when the doors open at 6:45. You can also meet them in the room after the concert. Next Wednesday is early dismissal and next Friday is PD day! There will be no spelling next week.