Valentine's Buckets & Teacher Gifts

My students decorated large cans (recycled from our cafeteria!) to hold their Valentines. They loved adding their own personal touch to them and lots of stickers didn't hurt either!

Our third grade team gave the students glow bracelets for Valentine's Day. I really like to trend of not always giving candy out with the cards.

The Olympics Are Coming: Research A Sport

Curling? Luge? Biathlon? Nordic Combined? The Winter Olympics has some obscure sports. In order to understand the sports that will be played in the Winter Olympics, my students worked in partners to researchthe some of the non traditional sports. Each of them filled out an Olympics book and together they created a poster to present to the class. They loved watching videos about their sport and really got into the research!

 

 Moving onto the excellent posters for their presentations:

My students are ready for the Winter Olympics and are going to know so much about the sports as they watch!

The Olympics Are Coming: Tracking Medals

My students were four and five years old the last time the Winter Olympics rolled around so they have a lot to catch up on. They are working in partners to research a Winter Olympic sport. As well, throughout the Olympics, students will track medals won by countries. I looked up the top nine winningest countries in recent Winter Olympics. Then I assigned the students to a country. They colored the flag of that country and we posted their tracking sheets at the front of our classroom. We will look up medal totals each day and update our tallies.

Technical Writing: How To Build A Snowman

Each year, as we are anticipating the arrival of our snowstorm(s), we write a technical piece How To Build A Snowman. We focus on writing sequential paragraphs instead of 1., 2., 3., etc. steps. We discussed all the sequence and transition words they would be able to use in their writing. Then we drafted!

As they edited with a partner, each student read their directions aloud. Their partner used a whiteboard to draw the directions they were hearing. This really helped the students understand what they were missing from their directions. There were many drawing with three snowballs side by side because the author forgot to include the stacking step :)

After final drafts were written, students decorated their own snowman to 'hold' their writing. These snowmen looked more festive than the ones we have made in the past.

 

Which Team Will Win? Super Bowl 2014

Who are you predicting will win the 2014 Super Bowl? I asked my third graders to make a prediction and decorate a helmet to show their vote. I think some of my students chose the Denver Broncos to win because they are neighbors to the west. Others have just heard more about the Broncos because the Chiefs play them twice a year. I have a student who moved to Kansas from Washington state, so she is definitely rooting for the Seahawks, along with a couple other classmates.

 

We will see who wins tomorrow!

Writing Dialogue with Conversation Hearts

Our students have been working on adding dialogue into their narratives. In order to both practice our new skill and get into the Valentine's Day spirit, we wrote dialogue with conversation hearts.

The students were given two conversation hearts (I went through and sorted out the "Kiss Me", "First Kiss", "Love Me", etc.) and had to build a dialogue from them. We practiced together first.

Then the students got busy with their own conversation heart dialogue. They rough drafted in their composition journals and completed a final draft. Students created a drawing scene to go with their dialogue. Then we jazzed them up with some fancy scissors and festive cardstock.

 

 

Cursive Handwriting Check

My 3rd graders "graduated" from their Cursive Handwriting book the first week in January. Since then, I have been writing (almost) everything in cursive. I have found that they are able to write in cursive, but it is hard for them to read the cursive. This is especially true since everyone has a bit different cursive style (it is handwriting, afterall!).

Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences are coming up and I want my students to have a product to show their parents about cursive. I found this idea for Kindergarteners to practice writing with using their classmates as "things" to write about. I decided to amp it up a bit and have my students use the same format, but to write the names in cursive. They LOVED it! It was fun for them to write their friends' names.

I am excited to have parents see what their child has learned in cursive. Here are a few shots of them working on their writing.:

 

 

 

 

It Comes Every Four Years

Happy LEAP DAY!
Today only comes around every four years. Here's a little history about Leap Year. Basically, we have Leap Year to make up for our calendar year error. Each year is actually 365 days and 6 hours. To make up for that "extra", every four years a day is added to February.

The following is the Leap Day Challenges given to my students:

Find it here!

If I Were President...

After reading If I Were President with class, students wrote in their journals how they would change the world for the better. It was interesting to read their ideas on how the world could improve.

These are some of our wishes to change the world:

• 
  
  If I could change the the world, I would change the malls into parks so that we could play all the time. I would make more football stadiums so that the football players do not have to travel a lot.


• 
  
  I would not change anything about the world. I like the world how it is. I like everything about it except the prices. I wish the prices were lower.


• 
  
  To make this world a better place, I would not little at all. I would not call people names either. I would tell people not to hit or not to be mean.


• 
  
  I would change the world by having a machine that would pick up trash. I would pick up trash. I would grow plants and trees.


• 
  
  If I were President, I would make a law that there would not be any pollution. There will be more trash cans where you are. So the Earth would be pollution free!


• 
  
  I would paint the world so it is more colorful. Then the would would not be all the same. It would be more playful and more fun. There would be lots of love and not smacking and no drinking bad drinks so the would is not bad.


• 
  
  I would lower tax movey because we pay a lot of money. And we can't live like that, but we need a reason to pay so much money.


• 
  
  If I were President, I would send a note to the people who make laws. It would be about smoking and drugs that are really bad. You do not want loved ones to die by smoking or drugs. If I got a veto, then I would keep sending it until they accept.


• 
  
  I would teach kids to do cursive. I would clean the world to be spotless. I would tell poepl no weapons.


• 
  
  If I could change the world, I would make sure that there is no smoking or drinking. Because poepl do die because of it. It is very sad because it is there fault that they died. They need our help.


• 
  
  I will feed that school healthy food. So the students can be healthy. And to be strong. I would have people treat each other nice.


• 
  
  If I could change the world, I would help peace and no war. I would make a law that if anyone gets caught trying to kill, they will be executed. I would also make a law for no smoking.


• 
  
  If I chould change the world, I would not. I would only change one thing, no fighting. Other than that, the world is fine.

I love seeing the world through the eyes of a 3rd Grader :)

Happy Valentine's Day

After having cupcake & cookie parties for many years, the third grade team at Moonlight decided to reinvent our Valentine Party. We have it in the morning right when the kiddos get to school. It is a breakfast party, with pancakes, bacon, fruit, muffins, milk, and juice! The students absolutely LOVE it! Who wouldn't want to have breakfast in the classroom!

The students made Valentine cans this year so hold all their classmates' Valentines. We also played Valentine Minute to Win It in which the students had 60 seconds to complete their challenge. It was so fun watching them do this!