Newsletter 1-10-13

Ms. Little’s Third Grade Beacon

January 10, 2013

Upcoming & Important Events:

·        Friday, January 11^th – Dismissal at 12:30

·        Friday, January 18^th – Book orders due

·        Friday, January 18^th – Dismissal at 12:30

·        Monday, January 21^st – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (no school)

Classroom News:

Madison: In Ms. Little’s class we are doing Literacy. One of the choices is to listen to The Snowy Day. In the beginning of the story, Peter wakes up and it is snowing so he rushes to get ready to go out in the snow. The next part in the story is he goes outside and finds a stick and uses it to make a track. Then he made a smiling snowman. Then he made snow angels. Then he pretended he was a mountain climber. Then he went inside and went to bed. While he was sleeping he had a dream that the sun came out and melted the snow, but when he woke up the snow was still there and he was glad.

Colin: In Literacy we changed reading groups into writing groups. My group is Daniel, Phaydan, Madison, and Elizabeth. I love writing with my group! We are working on story mountains and story scenes for our realistic fiction stories. Ms. Little thinks our stories are coming out very well!

Ali: At morning meeting yesterday Katie came up with a new greeting. It was called the finger touch. First we touched fingers. Then we said good morning or whatever Katie picked to say. We also learned how to do the snowball greeting last week. First we wrote our name down and crumpled up the piece of paper. Then we put it in the bin. Next we took one out of the bin and greeted whoever’s name was on the paper. Last we went back to our spot.

Logan: We read 100 Hungry Ants in Math. The ants were trying to get food from a picnic. The little ant said, “Stop! We are moving too slow.” So they went by 50 in 2 rows. They walked until the little ant said, “Stop! We are moving too slow.” So they went by 25 in 4 rows but when the got there the food was all gone. All 99 ants were chasing the little ant.

Phaydan: Last Friday we played a game. It was called New Years Scoot. First Ms. Little gave out cards. Each card had a question about the New Year. Colin and Tyler passed out the recording sheets. Ms. Little gave us two minutes to answer the question that was at the desk, and then she said, “Scoot!” So we moved one seat to the left and answered that question.

Seamus: Two weeks ago we listened to the story The Jacket I Wear in the Snow. I liked it because it showed all the gear that you wear in the snow in the book. All my friends laughed at the part about the long underwear. My favorite part was when she put on the warm coat. I think it was a good book.

Katie: On Monday we learned about line graphs. We marked the highest and lowest points on the graph. We used information from a tally chart to make our own line graphs. We used a ruler to make straight lines from dot to dot. We also did a worksheet.

Emily: A couple weeks ago we made snowman glyphs. When we make glyphs we have questions so we know like what kind of buttons we should put on. This is how we do it. Say this is a question for the kind of nose. We’d have two questions, like if you like snow or if you don’t like snow. If you did like snow then you would put a carrot nose, and if you didn’t like snow then you would put a square nose. We had a lot of questions like that. Then Ms. Little put them up on the bulletin board. Mine had a tall hat with a pom pom on it because I am a girl.

Daniel: Last Library we learned about Google Earth. In Google Earth the first thing we looked for was our house. We found our house by entering our address and writing MA. After that we checked out books. Last, we left.

Elizabeth: In our class we made New Year’s resolutions. We read two poems. First we read a silly poem and a then we read a serious poem. Then we wrote a silly resolution and a serious resolution. A resolution is something you want to do to make yourself better this year. There was a sock in the picture to remind us that that is the serious resolution. The silly one said, “This year maybe I’ll…” and the serious one said, “This year I’ll knock your socks off by…”

Nathan: We read a story called Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. It was about not letting the pigeon drive the bus. He did all he could to try to tell us he should drive the bus in the story. We read the story because the author Mo Willems uses a lot of punctuation and we are learning about that.

Sophia: In cursive we learned uppercase O and D. To do an O you make an uppercase O and flick it out at the top. To do a D you swing down, loop around, swing up, and loop around and out. After we were done we raised our hand and Ms. Little checked our page. Then we could practice on our white board or do a practice sheet.

Jesse: Our class read The Quiltmaker’s Gift. A king in the story wanted to celebrate his birthday twice a year. The king found a lady that could sew amazing quilts. The king sent all of his 1,000 soldiers to get a quilt from the lady. The lady said she only gives her quilts to people who need them so the soldiers tied the lady in a cave that had a sleeping bear. When the bear woke up, the lady had made him a quilt. At the end the king realized it was better to give and not get.

Lily: In Math we played a game called Bike Path. We used number cards and dice, too. We played to practice multiplication. It was a good game. I had fun playing it.

Seanalee: We did a cursive project because we finished learning all the lowercase letters. Everyone got to pick a choice from the Smartboard. The one I chose was called Can You Find the Cursive Lowercase Letters? There were different pictures like mine. Ali did Where is l? Katie did Can You Find the Lowercase Letters in My Dessert? We had to hide the lowercase letters or words in our picture.

Jameson: We read The Quiltmaker’s Gift. After we read we talked about what we would give away. I said I would give away my poofy blanket and my bed to someone who needs it. After we wrote we colored quilts and hung them on the wall.

Tyler: Last week in Gym we did a relay race. For the relay it was a bucket relay race. After that we played Crazy Tag. Crazy Tag is like tag but it’s crazy. After Crazy Tag we practiced shooting hoops.

David: In Math last week we made in and out boxes for multiplication. We had to find out the rule first. Then we finished putting the numbers in the boxes in the table. I was partners with Sophia and Molly. On Sophia’s I was doing x 9 as my rule. I had to figure it out by myself but it was fun.

Tatyiana: In Music last week we played the recorder. We have these books and there are all kinds of recorders. There are blue, white, and pink recorders. We played Jingle Bells.

Brenna: In Art we made clay houses. We used our hands. We made the roof, door, and window all with our hands. We all took our time. We used toothbrushes to rough the clay. We are going to paint them.

Ms. Little: Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an enjoyable winter break. We are running low on shared classroom supplies such as pump bottles of hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes. Any contributions would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy the weekend.