Christmas

What a fun week in 3rd Grade!  There is nothing that warms our hearts more than sharing the Christmas story with your children.  We spent a lot of time this week talking and reading books about the birth of our Savior.  These students have such a heart for JESUS!  What an awesome reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.

Thank you to all of you who came to help with Gingerbread houses.  The students had a wonderful time creating these and there are many photos on the smugmug site for you to enjoy.

We also want to thank the parents who planned our class Christmas party on Thursday.  The students made an adorable snowman craft and enjoyed lots of great treats.  

We also enjoyed a wonderful chapel this morning with Positive Options (formally Lakeshore Pregnancy Center).  Our class collected over 120 items to bring!  Thank you for your generosity to this cause.  

There is NO homework over Christmas break!  We encouraged your children today to keep reading, but let them read whatever they want at whatever level they desire.  We wish you and your family a WONDERFUL Christmas vacation and many blessings in the New Year.  

Blessings,
Erin and Lynae

The weeks leading up to Christmas are so exciting in our 3rd grade classroom.  The students are thrilled with all of the items that they have collected for the Lakeshore Pregnancy Center (Positive Options) and we are keeping a running total of all of the items that they have brought in.  We are also spending a lot of time during our devotions talking about Advent and the anticipation we have for the birth of our Savior.  The class worked really hard this week on their academics as well so that we will be able to enjoy a lot of fun events this coming week.  Here a glimpse of what is happening in our class!

Reading:  This week in reading we looked at how our characters can act differently than what we might anticipate.  We also tried something that can be very difficult for younger children which was to identify a "theory" or a big idea about life from watching what our characters go through and how they react to it.  They did such a wonderful job with this.  We have some deep thinkers in our room.  We also identified what it was that our characters really desire and what seems to always get in their way and then what is there reaction to it.  Next week we will wrap up our book clubs and when we return from Christmas break we will start learning how to read through nonfiction with POWER!

REMINDER-reading minutes due Monday with a parent signature.

Writing:  This week we have continued to revise our writing by adding sensory details, transition words, and internal feelings and we edited our writing by making sure we used appropriate punctuation, upper/lower case letters, and that our spelling was readable.  Next we we will publish. 

 

Math:  We are almost done with our unit on measurement, elapsed time, and graphing.  A review test went home with your child on Thursday and needs to be returned to school on Monday.  If there are any problems on the review test that are tricky for your child to solve, have them circle the problem and I will reteach those concepts on Monday.  We will be having our math test on Tuesday, December 16.

 

Bible:  We will finish our unit on Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac early this coming week.  We will then be focusing more on the Christmas story and the meaning of advent.  We also continue to learn Luke 2: 6-20.  This Bible memory passage is due by Friday, December 19.  We are reciting it a lot in class and have illustrated each verse as well so most students should be able to say it confidently.

Social Studies:  We wrapped up our study of Michigan’s geography this week.  We focused specifically on different regions in Michigan and reviewed for our test that we took on Friday.  We will be studying the economy of Michigan in our next Unit. 

Reminders:

• Thank you to all of you who are able to come in on Wednesday, December 17 for Gingerbread houses!  The kids are SO excited for this activity!  A letter when home Friday with all of the details that you need to know. 
• We are continuing to collect donations for the Lakeshore Pregnancy Center.  Instead of exchanging student gifts, we encourage the students to give to this cause.  What a great way to show God’s love!
• We will have our classroom party on Thursday, December 18 in the afternoon.  Thank you to our room moms for organizing this event for the class!

Blessings,

Lynae and Erin

HOPE

This first week of advent has caused much stirring in my heart.  This week I have been reminded repeatedly of how blessed I am to be able to put my HOPE in my SAVIOR!  We have not been promised lives without struggle but we have been promised HOPE.  

And again, Isaiah says, "The Root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him." May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Romans 15:12-13

Reading: this week we have started our second books in our series.  It has been so amazing to listen to your children discuss their insights on their characters.  This week we spent time looking at our characters and thinking about what life lessons can we learn from them and then how our Christian Faith is linked to that.  Ask your child about some of their life lessons they learned this week.  We also have been in a discussion about HOPE.  Right now our characters in our story are going through a severe draught and my question to the children was--What do we put our hope in.  They all said Jesus.  My next question was--what do people put their hope in if they do not know Jesus.  They looked at me and the room went silent.  To me this was am amazing moment.  This showed me that they know the only hope you can have comes from Jesus.  WOW! Your children humble me everyday I am with them. 

Writing: this week we have learned how to make our personal narratives more powerful by revising our leads that pull the reader in, revising by adding sensory details, and by adding more descriptive transitional words and phrases.  Your children continue to knock my socks off with their writing.  They love it and everyday when writing time is over--they complain because they want to keep doing it.

Math:  We continued studying measurement this week with liquid volume and mass.  Students solved word problems dealing with milliliters, liters, grams and kilograms. 

We also worked this week on the concept of time.  We reviewed how to tell time to the minute and then began solving word problems dealing with elapsed time.  Some students are able to find elapsed time by using a clock but most prefer to use a number line to find their answer.  We will continue working on this next week. 

Bible:  We are studying Abram and how God fulfills his promises to him.  This week we learned how God changed Abram’s name to Abraham.  We then looked up the spiritual meaning of all of the student’s names and created a keynote project with their name meaning and a special verse for each child. 

We also studied Lot and how the city of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed when God could not find even 10 righteous people living there.  We see over and over again how God desires for us to live a life that is pleasing to him. 

We are also learning Luke 2:6-20 in class.  This is a long bible memory so we are illustrating it as well.  Any additional practice on this passage at home would be great!

Social Studies:  We continued our study of Michigan this week by focusing on the different ways good, people and ideas move in and out of Michigan.   We focused specifically on how the Great Lakes play an important role in our transportation of goods and how this is unique to our state.  We also learned a bit about zebra muscles and how they have infested the Great Lakes.   

Reminders:

·            If you are interested in volunteering to help with gingerbread houses on December 17 you can sign up on our blog under the “Gingerbread House” posting.  We would love as many volunteers as we can get.  Thank you for your willingness to help in this way!

·            We are continuing to collect donations for the Lakeshore Pregnancy Center.  Instead of exchanging student gifts, we encourage the students to give to this cause.  What a great way to show God’s love!

Erin and Lynae

  

Gingerbread Houses!

Dear Parents,

On Wednesday afternoon, December 17, from 12:40-2:00, the third graders will be putting together gingerbread houses.  We are excited about this annual Christmas project!  Children will be taking home a gingerbread house of their very own.  In order for this day to be successful we are asking for a few things.  To make this as easy and organized as possible the teachers will collect the items needed for the construction of the houses.  We will also have a special decorating icing ready to go at school.

In you have any spare and/or stale candy you are looking to get rid of, and would work well for the gingerbread houses, we would be willing to take that off your hands.  We are also in need of any cake decorating equipment that you would be willing for us to use that day.  Most importantly, we are looking for as many volunteers as we can get to help with the construction of the houses.  Because volunteers will be assisting small groups of students, we are asking that no siblings be taken along.

If you are willing and able to help with such a challenge, please let us know via the sign up genius by clicking HERE so we can plan on your assistance.

Thanks so much!

The Third Grade Teachers

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