This was a busy week in our 3rd grade classroom.  When I (Lynae) take a look back over the week I am amazed at how much we accomplish.   A few of my favorite moments this week were the following:

• We found 12 different bible verses that mean a lot to us and put them on a ring because the students wanted to take them home and put them in special places so they can refer to them often and possibly even memorize the verses.  It just warms my heart.
• We gathered around the flag pole to pray for our country, our school, and other local schools.  I love the community that we have here at Pine Ridge.
• We won a pizza party with the Walk-a-thon fundraising our class did.  What a blast to receive such a special treat!
• We learned about renewable vs. nonrenewable resources and our job as Christians to care for the resources God has blessed us with.
• The class was able to shop again at our Rock Star Store on Friday.  This is a huge motivator for so many students and so much fun!
• Listening to your children pray for each other each day when we begin school.  These students have such caring hearts and hold each other in prayer faithfully.

Academically, we have been very busy too!  Here is a glimpse of what we have been up to:

Math:  This week we continued to work with Multiplication and division with the factors of 2,3,4,5,9, and 10.  We also focused on how we find the area of an array and learned a few different strategies to help us with this.  We spent a lot of time with cubes the week and learned how 6x4= (2x4)+(4x4).  

Bible:  We are learning about the organization of the bible.  This week we focused some more on the table of contents and also studied the concordance and the footnotes.  I was amazed at how many students loved learning about the concordance.  We would pick a topic, such as joy, and then look at how many verses there were in the bible on that topic and then choose a few to look up and read as a class.  Students also finished their  "Daily Dozen" where they had twelve verses from the bible that they illustrated, put on a ring, and took home to reference often when they need to remember God's promises to them.  We have memorized Psalm 24 and will be starting Psalm 103 this coming week.

Science:  This week we focused on renewable verses non-renewable resources.  We read books and watched a couple of video clips on the importance of renewable resources.  We also talked about how paper, plastic, and glass are made and how often we use these types of items everyday.  On Friday we started studying the importance of farmland and we did a fun experiment with an apple to learn exactly how much farmland we actually have.  (Ask your child to explain that experiment to you!)

Reading:  In reading this week we have continued to work on retelling the big events of our story.  We focused this week on learning more about our characters and their actions and feelings in order to help us recall the big events of he story.  We also learned how to examine the life lessons that our characters are learning which helps us gain a different point of view from that of our own.  Your children are very focused and engaged during our reading time.  It is so amazing to watch.

Writing:  In writing this week we have created our discovery drafts of our first personal narrative.  We looked at published authors and how they create exciting leads which suck the reader in as well as how they end their chapters and their stories.  The children then took what they learned about leads and endings and started revising their own.  Ask your child about the types of leads/endings writers use (action, setting, dialogue, and feelings).

A note from our Music teacher, Mrs Boer....

This is what we are learning in Music Class:

*Hymn of the Month-Take My Life and Let It Be

*Theme Song-Let Your Kingdom Come

*Keeping a steady beat

*Note values

*Tempo

Blessings!

Mrs. Stielstra and Mrs. Wyma