Third Grade Thoughts
Welcome to another exciting month. What a wonderful time to celebrate the love and friendship that we share with our friends and family! This is also the perfect time of year to acknowledge when our children are showing kindness in and outside of school.
A reminder, please make sure your child has proper winter gear each day.
Math Highlights:
We wrapped up our unit on decimals and place value. After completing this unit, the students are now able to identify the difference in place value from millions to thousandths, round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000, and have a better understanding of number sense. Wow! They really know their stuff. In our new unit on geometry, students will practice identifying line segments, rays and lines. They will grow their understanding of polygons and angles. We will learn many new math terms. Throughout each unit, we will continue to focus on solving story problems and memorizing our basic addition, subtraction and multiplication facts.
Language Arts Highlights:
Please make sure your child is reading 20 minutes a night in a “Just Right” book. Time spent reading should be recorded nightly on the February reading calendar and weekly on the read-a-thon sheets. We would love to win the Super Bowl of Reading this year.
Our language arts theme is “People and Nature.” In this unit we are reading, The Gardener, Pushing Up The Sky, Night Letters, A Symphony of Whales and Volcanoes. Our skills of focus include: summarizing, drawing conclusions, generalizing and comparing/contrasting. The evening can be a nice time to sit down with your child and read together. Additional practice and discussions involving these skills can help your child feel dually supported.
Health:
We are moving on to “Good Touch, Bad Touch.” The focus of this unit is: How to tell someone “No!” How to take care of your self and make sure a safe adult knows. This is a sensitive unit for students. In 3rd grade we touch on the topic of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. We have a lot of open discussions in this unit. We will watch a short video supplied by our social worker. Please make sure you talk with your child about this unit. We will make a note in our planner on the days we have these discussions so you’ll know. This topic goes along with our pamphlet on “My Family, Your Family” which describes different types of families.
Social Studies:
Our first lessons on ancient Egypt have intrigued us. Mr. Vrudny (one of our knowledgeable 4th grade teachers) kicked off our unit with a session of personal stories and photographs of his family’s journey through Egypt. This month we will continue to highlight Egypt’s history, its geographical location, the Nile River, pyramids, pharaohs and Egyptian life.
Writing:
Informational writing will be our next area of focus. We will learn how to write a table of contents, organize introductions that draw readers in, chapters that inform others, and conclusions that leave readers wanting to do, think, or learn more. We will conduct research using a kid friendly website called, www.kidrex.org. Please feel free to do some research at home on your child’s expert topic.
Thank you for continuing to spend time helping your child with the home writing assignments.
Science
Coming soon…. “Structures of Life.” We will share space in our classroom with seeds and crayfish and conduct a variety of investigations with living things. You might try to beat the winter blues by planting and growing seeds of vegetables, fruits, and/or other flowering plants. This activity may really brighten up your home and time together. Our crayfish will make their arrival at the end of this month. We will then spend 2 fabulous weeks observing and learning about their structures.
Keyboarding
Our fingers will continue typing away in February! 3rd graders are learning how to type. Our focus involves: how to use both hands on the keyboard, keep our eyes and attention on the screen instead of the keys and appropriate finger movements. HOMEROW IS “KEY”! Students are welcome to use their login information at home to practice at login.keyboardingonline.com. Your child may enjoy typing up a short story to share with your family and/or our class.
Field Trip
All 3rd grade classes will be going on a snow tubing field trip to the Elm Creek Park Reserve on February 27th. Permission slips and waivers have been sent home. Please return these at your earliest convenience.
The kids will tube in specially designed tubing lanes that are safe and fun. If students are unable to tube, or need a quick moment to warm up, other game-type activities will be offered in the conveniently located chalet. We will eat lunch at the park. Please make sure your child brings a labeled home lunch, beverage, and of course warm tubing apparel.
v Please contact me for dates if you are interested in being one of our future Mystery Readers. I have several dates open over the next few months and we would love for you to visit!
v We are looking for Valentine’s Day Party volunteers. If you are interested in enjoying the morning of the 13th with your child and his/her classmates, please send in the slip attached to the Valentine letter.
v Our classroom is in desperate need of disinfecting wipes! We’ve been on a healthy streak and any wipes you can supply are greatly appreciated!
February Birthdays:
February 9 Max
February 21 Mrs. Skoglund
Stars of the Week:
February 2 Shreya
February 9 Evan
February 23 Lexi
Dates to Remember:
Jan 28th Report Cards available online
Feb. 2nd Read-O-Thon Begins
Feb. 11th Valentine Containers Due
Feb. 13th Valentine’s Day Party
Feb. 16th No School (President’s Day)
Feb. 17-27 Book Exchange
Feb. 27th Elm Creek Field Trip
Feb. 27th Character Program @ 1:00
Feb. 27th Greenwood Movie Night
Please feel free to contact me with any concerns, questions or comments!
Christina Skoglund
Room #12
763-745-5572
P.S. Don’t forget to check us out on Twitter at @MrsSkoglund