We have had a wonderful first week of school.  Your children are all amazing.  We are so looking forward to having a wonderful year of growing closer towards Jesus and learning about many new things.

Below is a little summary of what we have done this past week in each content area.  

Math:  This week we began multiplication with 5's.  To teach this concept, your child learned that multiplication is really one long addition problem.  For instance, your child should be able to tell you that 4x5 is the same is 5+5+5+5.  All students learned how to draw a picture to show each multiplication problem that they are working on.  We call these drawings equal share drawings as multiplication can be used to represent equal groups.  We spent a lot of time this week solving multiplication problems of fives on our white boards by using our strategies of addition equations and equal share drawings and the students are feeling confident in this area.  I am so proud of them!

Science:  We have begun our first Science unit called "Earth and Me".  In this unit your child will learn about rocks and minerals, different earth materials, land and resource use, erosion, landslides, earthquakes, and volcanoes.  We began our unit by having every child choose a rock and then write a descriptive paragraph about the rock they had chosen.  We then sat in a circle and placed our rocks in the center.  The kids took turns reading their descriptions of their rocks and having their friends guess which rock was theirs.  This was a very fun activity and all of the students were very brave in reading their writing to their classmates.  

Bible:  Our first unit in Bible is focused on the book of Ephesians.  We learned that the author of this book is Paul and that the book of Ephesians was actually a letter sent to the church in Ephesus.  (The kids thought it was really cool that a book of the bible was actually a letter instead!).  I was completely amazed this week at the amount of knowledge your children had about Paul.  What an amazing thing to witness the sheer joy that comes from your kids as they recount so many wonderful facts from the bible!!  We focused specifically this week on the gift of salvation.  We made salvation hearts (hanging up in the hallway) and as we did we talked about how we can not save ourselves; but God has made a way for us!  We had a wonderful class discussion about salvation, Jesus' death and resurrection, and the promise of forgiveness.  

Reading:  This week we have talked about what reading is going to look like in 3rd grade and what we each need to be successful readers.  We also set goals for what we each want to accomplish this year as readers. On Thursday the children went book shopping and picked out their first "good fit" book they will be reading.  We also learned about a "FIVE FINGER TEST" to see if our book is just right for us.  We also read several different versions of unique fairy tales and we talked about how in 3rd grade the most important thing about reading is our comprehension.  We learned that identifying the narrative elements (characters, setting, problem, and solution) in stories we read help our comprehension. 

Writing: This week we also identified what helps us each do our very best writing.  We also talked about the WRITER'S NOTEBOOK and how that would collect all of our writing for the year.  We did have our first lesson on writing in which your child had to write about an important person and small moments that they remember with that person.  I was so excited to see how many children just wanted to keep writing--AWESOME!!!

Enjoy this long weekend and holiday break!  

We will see you all on Tuesday!

Mrs. Wyma and Mrs. Stielstra