Friday Stations

It's already Friday again!  (We're so glad to be here and not having another "Flood Day!"

Don't forget - Saturday is Fun Night at the Middle School.  We hope to see you there!  Thanks for the donations for our third grade gardening basket that will be on the silent auction.

For today's stations we finished up math, language, and reading assignments, created cute garden bees, and practiced reading, math, and grammar skills using ipad apps and websites.

Reading with Mrs. Hartsock

Our shared story this week has been a chapter from the book Ramona Quimby, Age 8.  Many students were familiar with Ramona, a favorite character in many chapter books by Beverly Cleary.  A skill that we focused on was generalizing.  Students practiced making generalizations about several topics, including "parents."  One funny generalization that was brainstormed by the group was that parents are tired a lot when the kids wake them up in the night.  I think they are right! ;)

We also continue to read Dear Levi and are anxious to find out how the story wraps up!

(Sorry, no photos!)

Language Skills

Spelling words for the week were all contractions.  Sometimes these words can be tricky to spell because it's a challenge to remember where the apostrophe goes.  We also continued to work on identifying and using adjectives, and introduced adverbs.


Identifying adverbs using the smart board.

Social Studies

We continue to learn about the history of communities.  Last week we learned about the first French, English, and Spanish settlers in what is now the United States. Students used the TruFlix website to find facts about the settlers.

This week our lesson focused on how changes in transportation have helped communities to grow.  We learned about the invention of the train and the creation of the intercontinental railroad which helped people travel much more quickly to the West.  We also learned about cars, and airplanes and how these methods of transportation have made our country/world smaller.  Students practiced their skimming and scanning skills, as well as how to find key information and completed a chart about the origins of transportation methods using the text.

Snow Yellow & The Origin of the 7 Dwarfs

On Thursday the Mid-Prairie Middle School STP group came and performed the musical to the students at Kalona.  The story was about how the 7 Dwarfs came to be...and the evil queen who put them under a magic spell.  Lots of funny laughs and it was fun to see some of our Kalona alumni!

Science

The kids have really enjoyed watching their Wisconsin Fast Plants grow.  We are graphing how quickly the fast plants grow in comparison with a radish seed.  We also have transplanted some of our plants to create a better growing environment.  Today we noticed buds were starting to develop!

The kids are recording their data on a keynote that we hope to have finished by the last day of school so they can share those with the families who come to our picnic.

Reading with Mrs. Bender

The kids have been working on finishing up our novel unit, Dear Levi.  This week we shared our Tall Tale projects as Hiram has a habit of telling Tall Tales in our story.   Reuben, another character in our story, collects buttons so the kids were all able to chose a button and write why it "called out to them."  Writing their version of Mice Pie was our creative writing assignment this week.  We have some very creative chefs!  Some included strawberries, bananas, chocolate and bacon into their recipes.  It was fun to see who all skinned and de-boned their mice and who didn't.  :)

Math

We wrapped up the fraction unit this week and began reviewing the multiplication facts.  REMEMBER THE KIDS NEED TO KNOW THEIR BASIC FACTS FOR 4TH GRADE!!  Please help them memorize these at home!

Early in the week we worked with fraction cards, charts and our resource book to help us identify equivalent fractions.  By drawing pictures we were able to change a fraction into a mixed fraction.  There is also a Everyday Day math application on the i-pad that helped the kids learn equivalent fractions.

We have also introduced the partial product multiplication technique.  This is something new for most parent.