A note from the boosters . . .

Thank you to everyone that donated items for last night's soup supper! It

was very well attended.  Boosters were able to add about $1300 to our

account. Thank you to everyone that came! The library was able to get MANY

new books, thanks to all the pledges and people that bought last night. Sara

will send out a message next week detailing how the reading event went.

Thank you again for all your support!

Denise Busch

KE Booster President

If you're interested in becoming active with the KE Boosters, or helping at

Fun Night on March 31, please contact me at:

dbusch@mid-prairie.k12.ia.us

This and That

Report Card Envelopes
     Please remember to sign and return your student's report card envelope.  We would like them all returned by Friday, February 3!  Thanks to all who have turned in the envelope (you can keep the contents).  Also, 3H families - please return the lime green sheet regarding conferencing with Mrs. Hartsock before her maternity leave if you haven't already (thanks so much to those who already have!).


White T-shirts
     We are getting close to doing our project with the white t-shirt that was listed on the supply list this fall.  If you have not already sent your shirt to school, please do so by February 24th.

Garden Basket
     Kalona Elementary's Fun Night is fast approaching!  The third grade classes collect garden items for our silent auction basket.  In the previous years we have had seeds, gardening gloves, plants, trowels, decorative stakes for the flower garden or vegetable garden, kneeling pads, just to name a few items.  The stores are beginning to stock their garden items so now would be a good time to start looking for items to donate.  (Even though it is snowing outside!)

 Reach for the Stars

Thanks so much for helping your child participate in the Reach for the Stars reading program!  We had an AWESOME percentage of students participate, and earned LOTS of new books for the library!  Students are very much looking forward to the assembly on Wednesday during which the top readers from each class will be recognized, and some lucky students will get to throw pies at Mr. Cayton because we reached our school wide reading goal.  Stay tuned for pictures . . .

 Keep reading at home for our third grade February reading logs/goals.  These are due next week!

Science

Busy week working on our experiments.

We also had Ms Sarah Jackson come down on Friday from Clipper Wind in Cedar Rapids to tell us about the wind turbines.  She shared many interesting facts:

• The tower of a wind turbine is 400 feet tall. (That is taller than the Statue of Liberty)
• The blades are 150 ft. long. (Approximately the length of 1/2 a football field.)
• The blades are made out of fiberglass.
• Wind turbines can generate energy if the wind is only traveling 9 mph.
• The blades on the turbine can move over 100 mph.
• There are 4 generators inside that produce the electricity.
• The generators are approximately the size of a washing machine.
• The turbines are only ran by the wind, they do not have a motor inside to run the blades.
• Wind is a renewable energy source.
• Texas has the most wind turbines, Iowa comes in second.
• Clipper Wind has over 750 wind turbines in the United States and in Mexico.
• The turbines provide power to over 700,000 homes.

Reading with Mrs. Hartsock

Our shared story this week was Seal Surfer.  One skill that we worked on was summarizing - ask your child to summarize the story for you.  We also compared and contrasted characters in the story, and worked in small groups to practice reading fluently and with expression.

Social Studies

We're currently learning about how the location of a community can affect how the people of a community live.  This week we talked about natural resources that may be found in different communities, and how we can conserve and use natural resources wisely.

Language Skills

Spelling words this week focused on words that change when suffixes are added (-ed, ing, etc.), and our grammar focus was identifying and correctly using helping verbs. 

Students also wrote animal poems to correlate with our current reading theme, Amazing Animals. The children are doing a great job using Pages, our word processing program.  They are able to open a new document, type text and format it by changing the way the text is centered, and choosing a font.  

Math

The kids did a great job on their decimal test. Yea!  These should be coming home next week.  Next up is geometry and learning about the different shapes, lines, line segments, parallel lines and intersecting lines.  Continue to review the multiplication facts.

New Blog Feature

You can now subscribe to blog updates via e-mail!  At the sidebar to the right, there is a box in which you can enter an e-mail address.  You will then receive an e-mail with a link to help you set up your "subscription" (very simple) - and then you'll receive an e-mail any time the blog has been updated.

We will continue to send a Friday e-mail to remind families to check the blog, but thought we'd test out this new feature.

Book fair vouchers

Just wanted to give you a heads up that gold (1/2 sheet size) vouchers to the Reach for the Stars book fair are being sent home today (Wednesday 1/25) with students who submitted pledge money.  The amount of the voucher is 50% of whatever pledges were submitted, so some students have quite a bit of "money" to spend on books!

The book fair will be open tomorrow, January 26th from 4:30 - 8:00 pm in the KE library.  In addition, plan to attend the Soup Supper (5:00 - 5:30pm, free will donation/carry out available) too!

If you can't make it to the book fair for your child to use his/her voucher, books will be selected for him/her using the wish list that was filled out at the beginning of our reading program - so your child will still get the books they earned. :)

Thanks!

Chili Supper/Book Fair

Thursday, January 26^th is our Chili Supper/Book Fair at KE!


The KE Boosters are sponsoring a Usbourne Book Fair and Free Will Donation Chili Supper. 

The meal will include homemade Chili or Chicken Noodle Soup, carrots and celery, slices of cheese, crackers, lemon aide and home made cinnamon rolls!

If you signed up to donate items, please bring in, or send to school with

your child, either Monday(23rd) or Tuesday(24th).

Book Fair is from 4:30-8:00pm

Chili Supper is served from 5:00-7:30pm

(Free Will Donation and carry out will be available too!)

(Remember that IF your child collected pledges for the Reach for the Stars program, half of the money raised will be given to them in a certificate to spend at the book fair that night!  IF your child raises $20, they will have a $10 certificate to spend in books to take home!!)

We hope to see everyone there!

Reach for the Stars Reading Incentive Wraps up

This weekend wraps up the RFTS reading program. Here's what we need you to do;

1.  Be sure to return reading calendars  on MONDAY.  (Even if your child didn't read at home, please return the calendar because we can record minutes read at school.  We MUST have the calendar to count the minutes in our class/school totals).

2.  It would be very helpful if you could help your child total ALL of the minutes he/she read (both at home and school) on the calendar. :)  Thanks for your help.

3.  Also return the pledge envelope with any pledges your child may have collected on MONDAY.

Thanks for helping your child participate in this fun event!

Friday! {Stations}

Since we have art on Day 2, our stations were a little bit shorter today.  Rotations included catching up on math and language assignments, working on science brochures, and reading Time For Kids.  Some students also finished up their stained glass snowflakes.

Language Skills

We studied two spelling lists this week:  words with air/are/ear endings, and a list of words that are frequently misspelled.  The grammar skill this week involved using the verb "to be" correctly in the past and present tense.  Students have also now learned all of the lower case cursive letters!

Social Studies

We began our new unit, "Where are Communities?" this week.  Students previewed the vocabulary for our new unit and brushed up on their reference skills by look up meanings in the glossary. The unit began by identifying the regions of the US, and learning how where people live can affect the way we live.

Looking up vocab words using the glossary

Working with a buddy to learn about regions of the US

Math

We continue to work on Decimals in math.  I am amazed at how many of the kids are understanding this concept!  Great job!  Do remember to continue to review the multiplication facts as they should have these memorized by 4th grade.

Also, you will notice some of the math grades went down this last quarter when the report cards come home on Monday.  Many of the kids struggled in remembering how to regroup when subtracting, division and multiplication were also a challenge, along with solving word problems. Send me an email if you have any questions.

Reading with Mrs. Bender

Finally we were able to finish our Dragon unit and the kids shared their journal about taking care of their own dragon.  We had some very interesting pets!  We also finished up Laura Ingalls Wilder by writing a poem and doing some journaling.  Our next novel will focus on a young man's journey across the Overland Trail in search of his dad's claim.  Lots of interesting adventures.  "Night of the Pufflings" was our story this week.  Pufflings live in Iceland so we have been noticing their different landforms.  In this unit we focus on summarizing, writing outlines and reviewing prefixes and suffixes.

Science

This week we continued working on our water, wind and solar experiments.  We had to postpone our guest speaker as she was snowed in at Cedar Rapids.  Hopefully next Friday she can come and talk to us about wind turbines.

This 'N That

A few reminders:

• It is VERY chilly outside these days . . . please make sure your child wears appropriate outdoor gear to school for recess (coat, snowpants, boots, mittens/gloves, hats).  If you need help with winter gear, please contact your child's teacher or the KE office.  Also - even if it's a "warmer" day, PLEASE send a coat with your child.  The weather can change unexpectedly, and while he/she can always take off a coat, it is hard to put one if you don't bring it.

• School begins at 8:25.  We start our day right away, so it is important that your child is in the classroom ready to go at 8:25 (not getting out of the car at that time) -- students arriving 10 minutes late miss the beginning instructions for science or social studies.  Students are allowed to enter classrooms at 8:05.  While we don't require that students arrive by 8:05, it is nice for them to have a few minutes to unpack their bag, sharpen pencils, and get ready for the day.  Thank you for helping your child arrive on time.

• Monday is a no school day

• Today marks the end of 2nd quarter.  Report cards will be sent home on Monday, January 23. (3H families -- please take note of the form that will be in your child's report card regarding scheduling p/t conferences.  As we discussed last fall, I will be holding conferences for those families who desire to meet with me before I go on maternity leave.)

Friday! {Stations}

Since it's the end of the quarter and many students had work to "catch up" on, today we had study hall stations.  Children worked their way through a to do list of unfinished work (math, cursive, language skill pages, and science brochures) - and if they got done, got to create a stained glass snowflake (everyone will have a chance to make one eventually).

We had a very productive afternoon, and it was great to see almost everyone get caught up on assignments.  Some students need to work on completing their work in a timely manner so that they don't get behind.  (Remembering when to work and when to "visit" would help). :)

Reach for the Stars Reading Incentive

Just a reminder to keep reading!  We are halfway through the RFTS reading incentive program, and third graders are doing a great job recording minutes read.  If you have questions, refer to the information here.


Reading during free time at school

Language Skills

We're ending a unit this week, so spelling and grammar skills from the theme were reviewed in preparation for the theme test.  Students took the end of the theme spelling test (graded), and were also given a chance to re-take the test to improve their score.  It is great to see lots of children studying at home and re-taking the test.

To correlate with Martin Luther King, Jr. day on Monday, we also did a writing project focusing on Dr. King's idea of having a dream.  We talked about how Dr. King had a dream to change the world and make it a better place, then brainstormed things that we would like to change in today's world and wrote about our dreams.

Brainstorming ideas

Typing our dreams

Reading with Mrs. Hartsock

We wrapped up theme 3, Incredible Stories, this week reading two stories: Dinosaur Bob and Fugitive on Four Legs.  Students compared/contrasted these stories and identified elements of the story that made them "incredible."  We also took our end of the theme integrated skills test.

Social Studies

We wrapped up unit four with a lesson on how changes in medicine have affected communities. It was interesting to read about the advances in medicine/health, such as vaccinations and pasteurization.  Students also took the unit test this week.  Next up we'll be studying "Where Are Communities?" and will learn about places in which communities are developed.

Pioneer Games - part 2

(Scroll down to see another post about this special event)

Pam came and visited the third grade classes this week to teach the kids about what pioneer children did for entertainment.  We have had a lot of interesting discussions about specific rules expected of children in the 1800's like "children should be seen and not heard" and girls of 8 should not play hop-scotch because it is not "lady-like".  Pam also shared some items you would find in a pioneer home.

The Hoop Game

Some of the games the kids played were Blind Man's Bluff, Poor Doggie, The Hoop Game and Knuckle Bones.