Busy Week Ahead!

Hello everyone!  I hope you enjoyed your 3 day weekend.  Mine was perfect as we had a wedding Friday night and then spent the rest of the weekend at the Kerian family cabin up by Mankato.  Had lots of fun tubing and kneeboarding.....and trying to stay warm!  Now it is time to wake up!  :)

We have a busy week ahead with lots going on.  To start with, I wanted to make a comment about book orders.  I am sending home our first book order for the year.  There are four different orders stapled together that your 3B child should have brought home today.  If you are ordering from book orders, please fill out each individual order form for the books you are selecting.   Return only the book orders you are ordering from.  You may then write a check to me, Kim Kerian, or pay cash.  The reason the check should be made out to me is that I order the books online so they come faster and use my credit card to pay for them so making the check out to me saves a lot of time.  There are some wonderful books in the book orders so hopefully you will find something your 3B child would enjoy to read.   Please return the book orders with the money by this Friday so that I can order them this coming weekend.

We had our first shipment of "mystery objects" arrive last week for science. Sadly, they did not survive.  (We never have any luck with this shipment).  Hopefully your 3B student shared with you our discovery of "sea monkeys", properly known as "brine shrimp".  Even though our sea monkeys did not hatch, the students did see a video of the animals hatching and growing.   There is a picture below to show what they looked like.

We will have more "arrivals" throughout the next few weeks and hopefully they will all survive. :)  Last Friday we planted various seeds so that we have some "food" for one of the "mystery objects" arriving.  Wonder what it is?

We are wrapping up our first unit on math soon.  It has been basically review or 2nd grade concepts, and I am very impressed with the math skills in 3B!  Wow!

Last week we also launched the second part of Daily 5 in literacy known as "Work on Writing".  Everyone was very anxious to get writing and already have their stamina up to 10 minutes on the first day!  Awesome!  We will continue to work on building our "Read to Self" stamina as I wrap up beginning of the year assessments this week.

Thank you to everyone for returning their "parent homework" and writing about their 3B student.  We are having a super time creating our own versions of Who is Melvin Bubble so much that the students don't want to stop writing in the morning.  That is a super thing to see!  I enjoyed reading your comments about your student, and they were full of smiles that mom and/or dad took the time to participate in this activity!  So fun!  We should have the published copy soon......but their may be one more step for you, the parents, to do at home so be ready.

Have a super week!  Remember it is chilly in the morning so remind your child to bring a coat or sweatshirt as they stand outside for quite a while before school.

New Week, New Activities, New News

I hope everyone had a great weekend! It was a nice weekend to kick back and relax. The kids usually come back on a Monday a little tired, but that was not the situation today. The students came in anxious and ready - and a little chatty. But we worked through it. The hardest part of the first few weeks of school is building the routine and stamina that will come into play the rest of the year. Currently, with our Daily 5 in literacy, we have made our "Read to Self" stamina up to 11 minutes! Yippee! We started "Read to Someone" today and that was a little more challenging, so we will continue to build that stamina as well. The other three components of the Daily 5 are Work on Writing, Word Works, and Listen to Reading. We should be through all five in the next few weeks and set for the year continually building our stamina in all areas. The Daily 5 replaces the traditional "centers" your child may have done in kindergarten, first, and second grade. I will also be doing Dibels assessments this week which involve students reading for a minute and retelling their reading. This assessment is done three times a year.
We have also thrown in a new part of our Morning Meeting and that is "sharing". Students are assigned a day of the week in which they can share something. Classmates can then raise their hands to ask questions about the sharing and encourage discussion. Again the purpose being to create a classroom community. The students seem to enjoy and benefit from the Morning Meeting, as do I.
So, as you can see, every thing is going very well. Be sure to check the daily blog that the students post. We'd love to have more followers and comments! Thank you also for checking my blog, which would love to have more followers also. Have a great week! Oh yeah, thank you to those parents who sent snacks. Our tummies than you also!