Let's Get Lost!

Pam Holtz, county naturalist, stopped by to help the kids learn about maps from a "birds eye view."  Groups were created with a different color and each used their map to find clues.  These clues would describe animals.  After eight clues in all most students had figured out their animal based on the clues they found around the school ground.

Talking about what the animal might be after getting a clue.

Ready to find the next clue.

What animal is it?

Waiting to find the next clue.

Adding another clue to figure out which animal it is.

Almost there...

Science: Infiltration

This week Mr. Wegter lead taught in Mrs. Bender's room.  He taught the students about infiltration and the water cycle in science.  To understand that various types of ground absorb water in different ways the students experimented with dirt and gravel to see if one was able to absorb more than the other.

Getting the facts.

An expert opinion is always needed to confirm the experiment as truth.

Inspecting closely to see how much water was absorbed by the gravel.

The dirt cups and gravel cups placed on the side for further examination.

This and That

A few announcements/reminders:

• Picture retake day is Friday, October 19.  If you would like your child to have his/her picture retaken, please return the photo envelope that you received.

• Next week is Homecoming Week at Mid-Prairie!  We'll celebrate at KE by "dressing up" each day. Here's the schedule:
Mon Oct 1- Twin Day/DOT Day (wear dot shirts)
Tue Oct 2 - Neon Day (Bright Colors)
Wed Oct 3 - Hat Day
Thu Oct 4 - Class Distinction Day (third graders will wear green)
Fri Oct 5 - Black & Gold Day

• Pleaese check out the information posted regarding Walk to School Day on October 3.  

• A reminder for 3H families - Book Orders are due on Wednesday, October 3.  

Time for Stations!

It's Friday, which means stations are up and running.  During this two-hour period students are completing math projects, free reading, group discovery through Time for Kids, and a seasonal craft which today was 3D pumpkins.

Learning how to create the 3D pumpkins.

Learning about the Pole2Pole expedition in Time for Kids.

Coloring the pumpkin on different surfaces to make it unique.

How money is used through store prices and estimation has been a great challenge!

Playing educational games as a reward for completing math homework.

Friday Stations!

It's Friday, which means that it's time for Stations in third grade!  Students look forward to rotating through various activities each Friday afternoon . . . here's a peek at some of today's stations:

BrainPOP - Students got to learn about a topic of their choosing using the BrainPOP website.  They recorded 3 interesting or important facts about their topic on a BrainPOP learning log sheet.

 


Time For Kids - Students read this week's Time For Kids and complete an activity page about the Arctic

 Catch up time! Students worked on any unfinished assignments

 Craft table - today we made pumpkins to display on our new fall bulletin board

Let's Get Lost!

Pam Holtz, county naturalist,  visited the third grade classes this week to help us practice reading a map from a birds-eye view.  The kids had to follow a map to find clues to an animal found in Iowa.  By the end of their journey, most had figured out their animal.

Pam identifying features on the map of KE

 
Orienting our maps (top of the math is North!)

Reading animal clues that we found

In search of the next clue

Found it!

Sharing our clues and guessing which animal each group had

Mrs. Hartsock's Reading Group

This week's shared story was The Keeping Quilt, by Patricia Polacco.  We enjoyed reading this story about an heirloom quilt that is passed down in the author's family as we began our second reading theme, Celebrating Traditions. Ask your child to tell you the story of how the quilt was made, and who got to use the quilt.

Students enjoyed watching a YouTube clip of the author, Patricia Polacco, telling about this book at an assembly when she visited with students in Colorado.  The students loved "seeing" the actual quilt on the video!  We also had fun talking about quilts and seeing some beautiful quilts/quilted wallhangings that belong to teachers and students at KE. Mrs. Juilfs, a fourth grade teacher who is an avid quilter shared some of her creations, and Mrs. Hartsock brought in some quilts/wallhangings that she and her mom made.  Several students also brought in quilts that were made especially for them as babies!  Lastly, we constructed paper pumpkin quilt blocks and put together our own class quilt.  We also enjoyed reading some of the other books written by Polacco.

Mrs. Juilfs' quilts

Reading The Keeping Quilt

A baby quilt!

Mrs. H.'s quilts

More baby quilts!

Watching the video of Polacco showing the actual Keeping Quilt

Making our paper pumpkin quilt

Social Studies

We're wrapping up our map skills unit by studying boundaries, map scale, and physical features on maps. Students practiced finding actual distances shown on maps by converting inches to miles using the scale of 1 inch = 200 miles.