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