An unexpected long weekend {Updates}

We hope you all stayed dry over the weekend, and that you enjoyed the unexpected "flood" day off of school.

Since school was cancelled on Friday, so Friday folders will be sent home today.  Please take a look at your child's folder asap, as there is some time-sensitive info included.

• Remember, Fun Night is THIS Saturday at the Middle School
• We are still collecting items for our Garden theme basket to be auctioned at Fun Night
• Calling all Moms!  We're hosting our Mother's Day Tea on May 10.  There is a note in your child's Friday folder with more info about this special event.

Fun Night {May 27}

Fun Night is approaching quickly . . . many thanks to those who have already donated items/signed up to work at Fun Night to make it a success.

Third Grade is collecting items to create a garden themed basket for the silent auction (items may divided into 2 or more smaller baskets, so it's fine if there are duplicates).  We're in need of any gardening items you'd like to add to our collection . . . garden decor, seeds, gardening shoes/aprons/gloves, gift certificats to a local nursery, etc. are all ideas to fill the basket.  Here's a peek at some of what we have already collected:

Friday! {Stations}

It's Friday - time for a third grade favorite - stations!  This week students colored carefully for a coloring contest sponsored by Washington County Public Health, completed unfinished math and language assignments, and played math and language review games on laptops and ipads.

I also found some photos from last Friday on my camera that I forgot to share . . .

March reading reward party -

Stations from last week -

Language Skills

Spelling words for the week included the a- and be- beginnings.  We continue to learn about adjectives, and students made adjective flowers to describe themselves.  Students also completed the cursive workbook, and have reviewed all of the upper and lower case letters.  This week we have started working on writing in cursive via copying poetry.  It's still a bit tricky for some students to remember the correct formation of each letter without a cursive example to use as a guide.  After doing one sample poem project, students are now working on a poetry booklet that they are also illustrating.

Mrs. Hartsock's reading group

Last week we read the story Pepita Talks Twice in our anthology and this week's story was Poppa's New Pants.  Skills that we've been working on include predicting and inferring, and identifying clues in the text. We also have discussed decision making, and students practiced making pros/cons lists.

We're also reading the novel Dear Levi, and are learning a lot about life on the wagon train.

Social Studies

We continue to learn about the history of communities.  We've gone waaaaaay back in time to learn about the first explorers to come to North America.  So far we've discussed Spanish explorers and early communities, as well as French explorers.

Students are also using the social studies text to work on some study skills.  We completed blanks in an outline using information from the text.

Live Healthy and Reach for the Stars

On Monday, we had an all school assembly to celebrate the end of Live Healthy Iowa and Reach for the Stars.  Several prizes were awarded.

Ian receiving a bag full of goodies for Live Healthy Iowa

Mr. Cayton, Miss Sarah, Ms Jenna and Bobbie Billups were in charge of the assembly.

Top Readers at Kalona Elementary

Third Grade Top Readers for Reach for the Stars

Reading with Mrs. Bender

"Poppa's New Pants" was the title of our story this week in our anthology.  Poppa goes to town and buys a new pair of pants.  He asks everyone in the house to hem them, but they say they are all too busy.  Yet, the next morning, his pants are hemmed!  Ask your student what happens next.  They kids wrote their own version of the story and created their own pants.

Science

Life Cycles is the theme of our new science unit.  This week the kids did some prediction about life cycles, investiaged the parts of a seed, and are using a keynote presentation to document what they are learning.

Math

We began fractions this week in math.  Using a lot of manipulatives, the kids worked on learning the parts of a fraction, dividing whole numbers into fractions, and trying different combinations for an exploratory activity.  Keep working on those multiplication facts...another chapter will be coming up!