As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches this year, I (Lynae) can not help but share with you how full my heart is to be teaching your child.  These 22 kids have completely stolen my heart and I give thanks for each one of them.  I have been so incredibly blessed this year to have a wonderful job share partner and to be entrusted to help instruct these precious children.

It is never lost on Erin or me the importance of teaching these kids to love and live for Jesus.  I am so thankful for a place like Holland Christian where we can freely talk about God's love and how he has a wonderful plan for each of these students.  I am so thankful for a staff that strives to teach children the importance of serving God.  I am so blessed to be a small part of your child's life.  I am blessed!

"I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High."  Psalm 7:17

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

What a week!

We all survived our first two snow days of the season.  I think that this is the first time in my entire teaching career (20 years) that I have had snow days before Thanksgiving.  Amazing!  

This week marked the end of our swimming lessons.  Your children did a wonderful job with this change in their routine.  I must say that it will be nice to get back into a typical daily schedule though.

In reading this week, we practiced noticing patterns in our characters feelings and actions, how they interact with other characters in the story, and how they react to problems they are faced with and then we ask ourselves, "what does this reveal about our characters"? They are doing an amazing job discussing their thoughts in their book clubs.  

In writing this week we have learned how to use our story mountains to organize our story into paragraphs.  This week we have worked on building our paragraphs by adding more details which results in us creating our first draft of our second personal narrative.  It is great to see already how your child has grown as a writer even compared to their writing from September.

READING MINUTES-please remember to have your child turn their reading minutes in Monday morning.  Also, it is very important that if they have brought their series reading book home that it comes right back to school the next day or they will get very behind.  Thank you.

This next week we will not have any word work due to Thanksgiving break.

Math:  We began measuring line segments to the nearest inch, half inch, and quarter inch this week.  We have also begun to look at what a fraction looks like and how it relates to measurement.  On Friday we did an experiment with liquid volume to see how cups, pints, quarts, half gallons, and gallons relate to each other.  We will continue to work on our math facts at school but please encourage your child to practice them at home as well. 

Bible:  We are studying Abram and how God fulfills his promises to him as he listens to God’s voice.  This week we learned how Abram’s nephew Lot made choices because they were easy for him.  We talked about how following God’s will isn’t always easy but so worth it if we are listening to what God desires for our life.  I love how this class gets into our Bible discussions!  Their love for God is amazing!

Social Studies:  We continued our study of Michigan this week by focusing on Natural resources in Michigan.  We learned facts about Michigan’s forests, fertile soil, and water.  We will continue learning about natural resources next week as we look at minerals and oil. 

Advanced Notice: 

·            Due to the snow days, Monday’s lunch menu has changed to macaroni and Cheese, steamed broccoli, cherry tomatoes, and a muffin.

·            A note was sent home on Friday from the Children’s Advocacy Center.  They will be coming to our classroom on December 3 to talk to our class about skills to keep their bodies safe. 

·            December 17- You are invited to join your 3^rd grader in building a gingerbread house!  We will be creating these houses in the afternoon and would love it if each child had an adult to help them.  It is a great afternoon of fun and we hope you can make it.  We will be sending more information on this soon, but for now mark the date on your calendar!

·            We will soon be starting our service Christmas project at Pine Ridge.  Rather than exchanging student gifts, the students are asked to donate baby items that are then given to Lakeshore Pregnancy Center.  We will be having the kick-off to this event right soon when LPC visits us for a chapel.  It is a great experience of giving to others in need in our community. 

We hope you had a wonderful weekend!  Erin and Lynae

What a fun week!  

First of all, swimming lessons are off to a great start.   Your children are little fish in the water and it is a lot of fun to watch them swim! Those lovely swimsuits are definitely not a favorite for most of the students, but they still have a great attitude toward swimming class!  If you want to come watch this week, your child will be swimming from 12:35-1:20 on Monday-Thursday.  There are no swimming lessons on Friday.

Secondly, it SNOWED this week!  I love the enthusiasm the class has over seeing the snow again (definitely much more enthusiasm than me!).   The prayers of the students are prayers of praise for the change in seasons and for the blessing of playing in snow.  What an awesome creator our God is!

Here is what we have been doing in class:

Reading:
This week in reading we have started our new unit on studying characters throughout a book series. This is a very fun unit because they are doing this in book clubs. Ask your child to tell you about it. Our mentor text Sarah, Plain and Tall is such a great book. It is one of my favorites. Each day your student first meets with their group to discuss the previous day's teaching point and then we meet as a whole group and practice a new strategy. One important skill required in book clubs is how we talk to others but more importantly, how we listen and respond. We have actually practiced this using very specific prompts. This is a very important life long skill. This week the students set their reading goals and tracked the main and secondary characters of their story as well as the setting.



Writing:
This week we have practiced writing with sensory details a bit more as this is a very important skill so that our readers can experience our small moments that we are writing about. We also picked our next small moment that we want to publish for our 2nd personal narrative and we made our writing plan by putting the moment bit by bit on post it notes on a story mountain.


HOMEWORK ALERT: Your child has brought their story mountain home this weekend and they need to read it to 2 other people adding more verbal details than what is on their post it note. They also need to have those 2 listeners sing it in their homework folder for Monday. Please make sure that the story mountain comes back on Monday.


ALSO--I do need your help. It is very important that your child meets their book club reading goal every day and if they bring that book home to finish reading that it comes back with their orange reading journal the next day. If it does not come back, they can not participate in their book club because they do not have anything to share because they did not do the work. I appreciate your help on making sure that this happens each night. This reading can count for their normal reading minutes as well--just record it as such. Thank you!

Math:

We worked hard all week in preparation for our Friday Math test.  We reviewed multiplication and division facts, practiced finding area, and drew many pictures to help us with two step story problems.  Our test today went very well.  I told the class that their confidence in Math has grown so much since the beginning of the year!  I also told the students that as long as they did their best, I was extremely proud of them.  They DID do their best and my heart is full of pride.  What a hard working group!  Next week we will start a new unit dealing with measurement, time, and graphs.

Bible:

We wrapped up Psalm 121 this week.   We also began Psalm 100 which is a review for the class from previous years.  We have been studying Abram and how God calls him to leave his home and move to a new land.  We have mapped out Abram's journey to the land of Canaan and we have begun to focus on the promises God makes to Abram.  How incredible to see God's salvation plan unfolding in this story of the Bible!

Social Studies:

We learned this week about Michigan's climate (seasons, precipitation, lake effect, and temperature) as well as vegetation (orchards and forests).  We also focused on human characteristics in Michigan such as bridges, major highways, the Detroit tunnel, and lighthouses.  The class really enjoyed learning about the building of the Mackinac Bridge and we enjoyed a book and video on this topic.  I also showed the students a website that allows them to see photos of Michigan's lighthouses.  Several of the students asked to have this website to explore some more at home.  It is www.terrypepper.com/lights/state_michigan.htm

Have a great weekend!

Lynae and Erin

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend of rest, relaxation and family time. This weekend there was much joy and cheering in the Wyma household with the recent Calvin Men's soccer victory and the Women's Volleyball victory.  Gold and Maroon were flying all over our house. Quoting my husband, "It is a good DAY to be a KNIGHT!" (I am sorry to all the non-Calvin fans out there, I do not mean to gloat).

All joking aside, we have been having a wonderful time in 3rd grade.  We enjoy watching your children learn each and everyday.  They are so unique and have such precious spirits and we LOVE the individuality our class has.  They are such hard workers and they take their job of learning very seriously.

A REMINDER:
SWIMMING STARTS MONDAY: We will go each day from 12:30-1:52(this includes our bus ride there). Parents are welcome to come and watch. Your child will not need to bring a suit or towel as they will be provided for them and the kids are THRILLED about the fashion statements the suits make :). On the swimming days, it would be helpful if your child does not wear any accessories...jewelry, rope necklaces...only because they often get left behind and it takes more time for them to get them on and off. You also might want to pack a snack for the afternoon as they will be hungry when they are done.


Reading:
We finished Because of Winn Dixie.  We did a few special whole group activities to culminate this story.  We did an in depth study of some difficult vocabulary from the book. Your child worked with a partner using their Ipad and they studied a particular word and then on Monday, they will present these words to the class.  These words will be added to our word wall and the goal is to start using these words in our writing.  Ask your child what their special word was.  

We also did a fun silent "write around" where we each had 3 minutes to add external and internal traits to each of the characters from Because of Winn Dixie.  This was fun and they did a wonderful job.  They are now hanging on our door--take a look if you are in the building.  

As readers this week, the students were able to use any strategies from our giant toolbox to use during their independent reading time.  Ask your child what works best for them as a reader.  

On Friday, your child had to analyze a character from the story and talk about a life lesson that they have learned and how they can apply that to their life.  We want our students to not just read and recall but to apply it to their life and to see all of the life lessons through their Christian Faith Lens.

Next week we start our new unit on reading books within a series and it will be done with your child participating in a book club.  The mentor texts we will use will be Sarah, Plain and Tall and Skylark. We will study how characters change as they go through certain life events.  We will also be spending a lot of time teaching how to speak, listen and respond during a book discussion.

Writing:
This week we have been working on writing our 2nd personal narrative.  We have learned how to make it more powerful by writing about our "firsts", "lasts", and small moments we have had where we have experienced strong emotions.  We have also learned how to write using sensory details to help our readers experience our story.  We will spend a little more time on this next week as this is very difficult to do.

I want to let you all know that your children's spelling sentences are looking so much better than when we started.  They are paying much closer attention to forming letters correctly, using uppercase where appropriate and using punctuation.  I can also tell that your children are coming home and doing their word sorts.  Thank you for your help with this.

Math:  This week we were persistent as we worked on two step word problems.  We began by learning the correct order of operations when working with two step word problems (Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add and Subtract).  Students have learned the order by memorizing the acronym PEMDAS as Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. Students then started carefully reading story problems where they needed to use a two step operation in order to solve the problem. We continue to draw pictures of our math problems to make sure they make sense.

Next week Friday we will be having our second math test.  I will send home a practice test on Monday that the students have until Thursday to work through.  Have them bring the practice test back to school on Thursday and we will go over it together. 

Bible:  We finished our Unit this week on the fall of creation to the story of the tower of Babel.  We took a small assessment on this unit on Thursday which came home with your child in their Friday papers.  We focused very specifically this week on the Noah and the ark and the Tower of Babel. We continue to learn how God desires that we always put him first in our hearts.  The class continues to stand amazed at God’s love for his children even though we are sinful. 

We also completed illustrating our Psalm 121 books.  About half of the class has turned in their bible memory on Psalm 121 to me already.  This is due next week Friday, November 14.

Social Studies:  We continue to dig deep into our study of Michigan.  This week we had a lot of fun exploring the Michigan map.  Check out our smug mug site to see some of the fun!  We learned about the different landforms in Michigan (peninsulas, islands, sand dunes, and mountains) along with the different bodies of water (bays, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls) that are in our state.  We also began studying Michigan’s climate and vegetation.  The class is doing a great job with this unit and I love their enthusiasm for the state of Michigan!

Have a wonderful day!   Erin and Lynae

We had a wonderful FULL week of school!  It felt good to be back in the swing of things after having a few days off for conferences and the convention and the kids were ready to learn as well! We enjoyed meeting with each of you for conferences and are so thankful to journey with each of your children through Third grade.  We treasure all of the students in our class and consider it an honor to teach them every day.  As always, feel free to contact us anytime with any questions or concerns you may have.

We have had a busy week!  Here is what we have been doing:

Math:  This week we continued to build fluency with our multiplication and division facts.  We are also carefully reading story problems and drawing pictures to help us determine which order of operation is needed to solve the problem.  This coming week we will begin two step story problems and continue to work on our math facts. 

Bible:  We have been studying in the book of Genesis and learning how sometimes it is hard to obey God.   We have learned about Adam and Eve, Cain killing his brother Abel, and how their disobedience led to some tough consequences.  We have also studied the story of Noah and the ark and the challenges that Noah faced while building the ark.  Yet we see God’s protection and love for His people shinning through these stories and His salvation plan unfolding.  What an awesome God we serve!!  The students LOVE reading the stories directly from the bible and take turns sharing their thoughts and insights.  Bible continues to be a favorite subject of many kids and I just treasure this time as well.

Bible Memory:  We have begun Psalm 121.  As we learn each verse we are writing it down into a memory book and adding an illustration to help us remember it.  I will send home a slip on Monday with the NIV version we are learning so you can practice at home with your child as well.  

Social Studies:  We have begun our Social Studies unit called “The Geography of Michigan.”  We have learned what it means to be a geographer and we are busy studying about the natural and human characteristics of our community.  We have also focused on Michigan’s location through exact and relative terms.  The class LOVES this unit so far and is so excited to learn more about their state.  They especially love the book Legend of the Sleeping Bear this week.  I love to see their enthusiasm for learning!

READING
This week we really got very deep into thinking about our characters and connecting with them. We first looked at the objects that our characters hold close and what does that reveal about them. We then looked for patterns in the relationships that our characters have with others. This lesson fostered a conversation in our reading time about how relationships that we have with others can sometimes help us or hurt us and then we have choices to make about the importance of that relationship in our life. We also talked about which characters in our book act like image bearers. That is pretty high thinking for our 3rd graders. It always amazes me how deep my students think about their books and how they feel so comfortable to share. We also looked at the problems our characters face and how they overcome them. Before I taught this lesson, we talked about how we overcome our own challenges and problems and talked about how Jesus helps us overcome everything. I then asked the children how they thought people without Jesus overcome tough times in their life. They all just looked at me because they really could not image it. This led us into a discussion about why it is so beneficial to believe in Jesus and to put all of your faith in Him.

Reading this week was AMAZING!!

WORD WORK
Thank you all for signing your child's homework folder showing that your child explained their sort to you on Monday and they did it. I hope it was a bit more clear about what you can do with those sorts. You might want to have your child sort their words several times per week. One way to help your child spell the words is to follow this procedure:


1-have your student read the word
2-have them look at the word and spell it out loud
3-have them turn the word over and write the word without looking
4-have them flip the word back over and check their spelling
5-have them put all of their correct words in a pile and their incorrect words in a different pile
6-have them continue to practice(in the same way as mentioned above) the incorrect words until they get them all correct


SPELLING TEST
When I give the spelling test on Friday, I am also going to be using that as a test to correct letter formation and placement. I have talked to the children about this. If they put an uppercase letter in the middle of a word, it will be marked incorrect even if it is spelled correctly. This is part of a 3rd grade standard that your child needs to master--using uppercase and lowercase appropriately.

Just as a side note--I am sure that you have noticed how neat your child's writing has become using the penmanship paper and raising the expectation a bit. CELEBRATIONS!!!!

WRITING
This week in writing we have started our second unit on creating an even more powerful personal narrative. We kicked off the unit by reading a book titled Come on Rain by Karen Hesse. She is an amazing writer and uses some many of the strategies that we will be learning about in this next unit. We will use her book for our entire writing unit to study her work so we can then practice it in our own writing. This week we learned that not only can personal narratives be about important people, places or things in our life but we can make them even more powerful by writing small moments about the "FIRSTS" in our lives. My examples that I modeled for them were...The first time I had to call 911....The first time I had a student teacher...The first time I dropped Elise and Maddy off at Pine Ridge... This next unit is a unit in which we really want the children to write with much more emotion. They did an amazing job with this as some of them shared their writing on Friday.


REMINDER: Swimming Lessons will start the week of November 10-21. We will go each day from 12:30-1:52(this includes our bus ride there). Parents are welcome to come and watch. Your child will not need to bring a suit or towel as they will be provided for them and the kids are THRILLED about the fashion statements the suits make :). On the swimming days, it would be helpful if your child does not wear any accessories...jewelry, rope necklaces...only because they often get left behind and it takes more time for them to get them on and off. You also might want to pack a snack for the afternoon as they will be hungry when they are done.

Blessings to you in the upcoming week!

Lynae and Erin