It's February!

Today was Groundhog Day. Apparently our furry friend did indeed see his shadow, so we will have 6 more weeks of winter. 

We have been working on a lot of non-fiction reading and writing. Students are working on their informational texts. We are trying to incorporate some non-fiction text features into our work.  We may need some help from home to print out pictures, charts, or diagrams for our final drafts. Stay tuned! 

We have been reading about ants. Did you know that there are 10,000 kinds of ants?  A person who studies ants is called a myrmecologist. Ants have the most advanced brain of ALL insects. 

In math, we finished up our unit on graphing and have started a unit on addition and subtraction. We are working A LOT with mental math strategies.  We have been beginning our math lessons with NUMBER TALKS. 

These get us to think flexibly about how to solve problems. We take all answers and then DEFEND the answer that we chose. Students are learning that there are many different ways to solve problems in their head! 

We have also been working on ROUNDING to the nearest 10 and 100. This handy little rhyme helps us. Ask your child to explain it to you. 

 

Did you check us out on Twitter rounding numbers that are in the millions?  We are THAT SMART here in Room 102!  

Today, I shared Greg Tang's website with the class and it was a HUGE HIT!  Students can log on at home @ www.gregtang.com

Then click on games!  I highlighted and shared some fun ones in class today and the excitement was electric! This is an EASY way to get your child to practice his/her addition and subtractions facts or multiplication and division facts!  They love the challenge! 

Be careful Mom and Dad, you might get hooked too! 

Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1642.  He was an English scientist who changed the way people think about the motion of objects. His work influenced later scientists such as Albert Einstein. We learned about gravity and friction and NOW we are doing experiments to learn about Newton's 3 Laws of Motion. 

We learned that an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain in motion UNLESS acted on by a force. That was Newton's first law. 

Then we did an experiment trying to move a ping pong ball and a golf ball across the surface of a table using a force (blowing through a straw). We FOUND that it requires more force to move an object with more mass!  And we saw that the object will move in the direction of the force!  That is Newton's second law! 

So, the second experiment is a little gross. Did you know that when 3rd graders blow with excessive force through a straw there tends to be an abundance of SPIT?  Yes, it is true! Caroline C. told me she was light headed from the "force" used!  

The purple table is working hard! 

And FYI, we washed the tables MORE THAN ONCE!  I also washed the ping pong and golf balls as well.  The ICK AWARD was definitely won by the RED TABLE!  

Okay... I am going to head home now!  Remember to ask your third grader OPEN ENDED questions about school... not, "How was your day?"  As you can see... we certainly do a lot each day!