Katie - Animal Tracks

Katie, the BV County Naturalist, came in today to talk to us about animal tracks.  We got to feel lots of animal furs and then match a footprint to that animal.  We also got to stamp either a deer or a cougar track onto a piece of paper.  The kids love to feel each animal skin.

Election Day

Oops!  I was just looking through emails and found another great picture that showed the important even that our kids took place in.  Tuesday, November 6th was Election Day for our country.  While we know that only citizens over the age of 18 are legal to vote, we wanted the children to understand the process.  We took part in a mock election that was organized by the 3rd graders.  We watched videos to learn a little more about each candidate.  We talked about how voting is your own business and you don't have to vote for what your friends vote for - you make your own choice.  We "registered" for voting.  Then, on November 6th, we went to the voting booth to cast our ballots.

At the end of the day, the 3rd graders tallied up all of the ballots.  And the results.......
President Obama - 62          Governor Romney - 115


The next day, we talked about the actual results and how they differed from our mock election.  As you can imagine, there was some excitement and disappointment.  This was a great learning experience using a current news event!

Red Ribbon Week brought great discussions about saying no to drugs.  We had a couple of high school kids come to talk to us about smoking and the effects on our body.  The kids also made a project in art to tie in with Red Ribbon Week.

Halloween brought out some cute and scary kids.  We had a great classroom party - thanks to Sherry Mandernach, Kelly Bartek, and Michelle McCord.  There were great games and great treats!

Veteran's Day!

Our class practiced and rehearsed a poem for Veteran's Day.  We had the honor of performing in front of the local veterans at the program on Friday, November 9.  Here are some pictures of the kids practicing as partners and as a whole group.  Our video from the day of the actual performance didn't turn out - but we do have one of our rehearsal in our classroom.  Thanks to Scott Kilbride for pictures the day of our performance.

Shuffleboard

We got to go to the Newell Good Samaritan Center last week to play shuffleboard.  The staff split the group into 2 teams and the kids came up with their own team names.  It was a great time to practice the doubles math facts and counting on by tens that we had been working on in math.  

Science 

We started our discussion of living and non-living things.  The kids watched a powerpoint and had to come up with a list of ways to tell if something is living or non-living.  There were some great discussions!

The kids have been working a lot with doubles and memorizing doubles facts.  The used dice and doubled the fact and then graphed the number of times that we rolled that fact.  The kids have gotten very good with creating graphs and interpreting them.  

REMINDER -- 

The weather has drastically changed this past weekend.  Please make sure that your child is dressed appropriately.  Our recess will be outside everyday unless the windchill is below zero, so please make sure your child has a warm winter coat, hat and gloves.  It won't be long and they will be needing snow pants and boots as well.  This year it is even more important to have boots as we have to travel to the church parking lot for recess and there is no cement pad for the children to stand on if they don't have boots.  Without boots, their shoes will get wet - which causes cold toes!   It's best to have boots on hand before the snow flies, so please plan accordingly.