Another Week (almost) Down

I apologize for not writing on the blog or twitter at all this week.  The week has flown by and I can believe that we are finishing our 3rd week of school already. 

Remember that Friday will be school pictures.  We will be getting our pictures taken first thing in the morning.
Friday we will be taking our second selection test and second spelling test.  The kids did great on their spelling test last week and it really showed that they studied at home.  I hope we will have a repeat this week.

There was no homework on Wednesday night, but there will be tonight.  Some students have had questions about homework and said their parents weren't able to help them.  That is completely understandable as the math program is very different than the math that was taught before.  Remember at the beginning of each unit I send home a parent letter that explains some of the concepts and gives answers for the homework.  Hang on to those letters as they can be a huge help when attempting to help your student.

I hope everyone is having a great week and that everyone had a great Labor Day.  

Have a Great Weekend and Go Lynx!

Today we took our first selection test of the year and the kids did fairly well on it.  I am doing some new things with the way I teach reading this year so it was nice to see good scores on the first test.  The results will be sent home at the beginning of next week.

We also took our first spelling test of the year.  They all did a great job.  A few of the students didn't take it today as they were out of the room at the time we took it.  We will make it up next week.  Those that did take it should be bringing it home today to share with you.

Remember there is NO SCHOOL next MONDAY.  Tuesday school will resume with a full day.  We are back to full days unless you hear differently between now and then. 

Get out and support the Lynx tonight as they have their home opener against Gilbert tonight.  Freshman play at 4:45 and Varsity starts at 7:30. 

Have a great weekend and stay cool!!!

Homecoming T-Shirt Orders

Order forms are due tomorrow!!!  Last day to order, they are usually pretty strict so if you don't return the order form tomorrow you might not get a shirt. 

Friday night will also be the home opener football game for the Lynx.  Make plans to support the Lynx!

1 MORE DAY OF OUR FIRST FULL WEEK

We are winding down our first full week of school.  The kids have really impressed me this week with how well they have handled the hot weather.  When it is this warm it can be very hard to concentrate and focus but they all have done a great job.  The early outs have made a big difference. 

Tomorrow we will be taking our first reading selection test over the story Boom Town.  Ask your kids what Boom Town is about.  We will also be having our first final spelling test tomorrow.  The kids have had all week to study so they should be ready for the test tomorrow. 

I am looking for a parent volunteer that could work on some reading with kids.  This person would need to be available Thursdays and/or Fridays.  Thursday mornings anytime between 9:30 and 11:30 would work and Fridays would be anytime between 9:30 and 10:45.  This wouldn't have to be for the whole time, just sometime during those times.  If you are interested get ahold of me at school or email me. 

Warm Front????

I'd say it's safe to say that warm front has moved in.  We will be dismissing two hours early the remainder of the week.  Please talk with your kids about their after school plans. 

There was homework given today that is due tomorrow.  Also sent home today were picture forms.  Pictures are Friday, September 7th.  Everyone doesn't have to purchase pictures but everyone will get their picture taken for the class photo that everyone will get a copy of. 

The kids may bring water bottles if they would like.  If they want to leave them at school that is fine but I would encourage them to dump them out each day. 

Stay cool!!

Happy Monday!!!!

Our first full week of school has begun.  As odd as it sounds this will be the only Monday we have school in the first 4 weeks of school.  No school next Monday or the following Monday because of Labor Day and Teacher In-service. 

Tonight the students should bring home a spelling worksheet.  The worksheet needs to be worked on at some point this week.  It does NOT need to be returned to school at any point.  That is theirs to keep and to study from.  The spelling test will be on Friday.  I told the kids that we don't spend a lot of time on spelling in class so it will be their responsiblity to study the words at home. 

There will also be math homework tonight and the 15 minutes of reading as always. 

In math today we worked on telling time.  If you have an analog clock at home quiz your student from time to time about what time it is.  Discuss with them how the hour hand moves slowly from one number to the next. 

Remember the Homecoming T-shirt forms are due back by this Friday.  They are usually pretty strict with that deadline so if you plan on ordering I would do so ASAP. 

Follow us on twitter for quick little updates and reminders. 

Make it a great week!!!!

Our First Week is Complete!!!

Our first week is over.  We have had a great start of the year in 3rd grade.  Everyone is adjusting well and it almost seems like we have been in school for a while already.  The kids really know the routines and do a great job of doing what they are supposed to do. 

This morning almost everyone had their homework turned in before specials, that is great!  There will be homework over the weekend in math as we are moving right along. Remember to also keep reading 15 minutes a night.  The kids only need to read one 15 minute period over the weekend, but any extra is great.  

Happy Birthday to Kelanie Reyes-Siders on Sunday. Thanks for sharing cookies with us today. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend and if you get the chance go cheer on the Lynx.  GO LYNX!!

First Full Day is Complete!

We had a great first full day today!!  We have started learning some of the reading routines and are full swing into math already.  We took a pre-test in math this afternoon and learned about number grids.  Much of what we learn early in math is review from last year. 

There will be math homework this evening.  Almost everyone returned their homework this morning.  That is great.  I explained to the kids that if they don't get their homework done at night or forget that they are more than welcome to come in the room in the morning instead of playing on the playground to get it finished. 

Happy Birthday to Bronwyn and thanks for the popsicles. 

Great Start!!!

We are off to a great start!!  We have spent the last couple half days going over expectations and procedures for different things in the classroom and around school. I believe that if we go slow at the beginning and spend time learning these things then we will be able to go faster later and be able to get more done because we know the procedures and expectations so well.

The kids should have brought home a lot of different things today.  Their take-home folder, which they will bring home every night and will need to have signed every night, should have been filled with papers.  The important ones were the yellow packet and the math homelink.  The yellow papers are the parent letter for the first unit of math.  It talks about what we will be working on in the first unit and has answers to homework so you will be able to help your child if needed.  The math homelink should be completed and returned tomorrow.  They do not need to bring anything from home like the paper says. 

I hope everyone has had as good of a start as I have.  If there are any issues that have come up please contact me at the school and we will get them straightened out right away. 

Welcome to Meet the Teacher

I'm glad that you were all able to come tonight.  This is our class blog that we will be using this year.  The blog will be a place where I can post information about what is happening in our classroom.  I try to put things on their daily during the year.  You can look at the blog from any computer that is connected to the internet.  You can also join the blog and become a member so you can comment on it. 

See you tomorrow for the first day!!!!

Welcome to Third Grade!!!!!

Welcome to Third Grade!  I hope everyone is excited to start a new school year and is ready to learn a lot and have a lot of fun.  This blog will be used to post things that have been happening in the classroom.  There are links to websites that the kids can use at home, important dates, and much more.  I hope the kids and parents will utilize this blog and try to check it often.  I will do my best to update it almost daily.  I also encourage to to follow @mrbrimsclass on Twitter for quick updates. 

Crunch Time

I am starting to feel the year slip away as we only have 12 days left or as the kids put it 11 1/2.  Hard to believe that they year could be over already.  We will be busy in the next couple weeks as we have an End of theYear reading test to take next week as well as our 3rd Trimester Math test.  Today we took our last unit math test.  We will be going over it tomorrow.  We will be taking would could be our last selection test tomorrow as well. 

Ant Farm Day 14

Ants, Ants, Ants

We did a little experiment this morning as we were reading our ant story.  We added some seeds that they ants eat on one side of the farm and added some cookie crumbs on the other side to see what they liked more.  I think they just like anything to eat. 

The kids wrote some stories about all the different jobs that ants have.  A few students chose to have me share their stories on the blog.

Ant Jobs 

By Anna Atchison

Ants have many different jobs that they have to work together to get done.  Let's start with the queen ant, her job is to lay eggs and the queens goal is to make lots and lots of babies.  Let's go on to the worker ants.  The worker ants have lots of jobs, they pick up food, protect the colony and scoop up dirt to build tunnels.  Let's go on to the scouts.  The scouts look for food and then the scouts call the workers to help them carry all the food back to the nest and to find food is a very dangerous journey.  The ants get very joyful when they find food and the discovery they make when they find food and take it from humans is very cool. The humans are unaware of their food being gone.  When the ants get back to the nest it only takes a few weeks for the food to disappear. 

Ant Jobs

By Lacey Bloom

Ants have many different jobs that they have to work together to get done.  A lot of ants called workers have to build tunnels.  the ant workers have to pick up food and carry it back to their home.  Worker ants also protect their colony so enemies don't get in.  The queen ant lays the eggs and rules the home.  The scout ants find food and show the worker ants.  The ants think that sugar is crystals and carry it back.  The scout ants disappear in the grass to get food the scout ants are unaware of spiders.  The workers scoop up the crystals and take a journey back to their home.  The worker ants have a goal to get food to the queen ant.  The scout ants have a lot of discovery to find food.  The ants will all be joyful. 

Ant Jobs

By Jalyn Thome

Ants have many different jobs that they have to work together to get done.  Since ants have jobs they are unaware of people because they are always working.  When somebody gives the ants food they are joyful and scoop it up to take it to their home or to store ti somewhere.  When they dig their tunnels in an ant farm they are kind of taking a journey around it.  the ants scoop up food and after you look it there it has disappeared and if you give them a ball of sugar then it is a crystal to them.  When they have no tunnels at all on day one and day two it is filled with tunnels that means they are females and they are called workers and it is a discovery to us that a lot changed in one day.  It is the ants goal to keep the queen happy.  Ants have a lot of jobs.  

We finally were able to plant our garden with Mr. McKinney's class.  We plants peas, radishes, kohlrabi, spinach, lettuce, and 2 tomato plants.  It will be interesting to see if any of it comes up before school is out.  I believe some kids and teachers might take care of them this summer so hopefully in the fall we will have some fresh vegetables.

Ant Farm Day 12

I believe this is Day 12 of the ant farm.  In our story today it discussed how ants make rooms that are part of their tunnel system.  The two blue areas are what appear to be rooms that they have created.  One of them actually has a stockpile of food in it. 

Spelling Words

This week we are reading a story that is an animal fantasy about ants.  This story is the one that ties into our ant farm and will allow us to talk about a few different science things.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate this week and we will be able to get our garden planted.  In math this week we will start by reviewing what we have learned the last several weeks and then be taking our Unit 9 test.  

The spelling words for this week are following.

leadership, gracefully, refreshment, uncomfortable, overdoing, remarkable, carefully, unbearably, ownership, unacceptable, impossibly, reappeared, unprepared, oncoming, misbehaving, outrageous, incomprehensible, undoubtedly, independence, disadvantage

Ant Farm Day 9

The ants have been busy and so have we.  This week in reading we are reading a story about a man that keeps a bird as a pet.  Ask your student what the story is all about. 

In math we continued working on multiplication and learned a new method called bow-tie multiplication.  There will be homework over the lattice method which we also worked on today. 

In the middle of all that we squeezed time to go to the middle school and watch a 5th grade band concert with the 4th graders.  We took advantage of the nice afternoon and walked back to school. 

If the ground dries out  yet this week we will be planting our garden box with Mr. McKinney's class. 

If you scroll down and look at yesterday's picture of the ants you can see that they were very busy carrying a lot of sand up to the top.  I am beginning to think that the warm weather gets them energized and moving.  

Ant Farm Day 8

Bridge Building

Today in math we used pieces of paper to build bridges.  We stacked up books and the kids had to build a bridge out of a single piece of paper.  We then had a competition to see whose would hold the most.  Below are some pictures of the bridges. Simon won our competition with his bridge holding 22 miniature erasers.  Isaac was a close 2nd with 21. 

Math

There is math homework tonight.  We have learned a new way to do multiplication.  Chances are the parents will not know how to do it unless you have heard of it before.  It is called lattice multiplication.  It is really pretty simple.  I am going to put a link here to a video that does a great job of explaining it. (I couldn't get the link to work so you will have to copy and paste it.  The link in the Links box at the right should work.)

http://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/multiplication-division/v/lattice-multiplication

The website that the video is on is a great resources for learning how to do new things.  The videos are mostly math and science.  I will add it to the links box on the right side of this page.  This would be a great resource to share with any student of all ages.

Reading

Today in reading we talked about cause and effect.  Cause and effect should be a review skill for everyone as we have worked on it already this year.  Talk with your kids about causes and effects.  We also introduced the vocabulary words for this week which are bows, chilly, foolish, foreign, narrow, perches, and recipe.

Spelling Words

The spelling words for this week are listed below.  The test will be on Friday.  You child might be responsible for 1-8, 1-15, or 1-20.  It is important to study spelling words at home as we don't always take the time to study them here at school.  Everyone should be bringing home a list on a practice worksheet tonight.  above, another, upon, animal, paper, open, family, travel, afraid, nickel, sugar, circus, item, gallon, melon

Busy Day to end a Busy Week

This morning we took our reading test and spelling test.  The kids did a good job on the spelling test.  Everyone had 15 words this week and we had a lot of perfect scores.  I haven't had the opportunity to check the selection tests yet. 

We skipped math this afternoon and spent some time drawing a picture of what we thought Brian's shelter looked like.  Brian is the character in the book Hatchet which we read before we went on our field trip.  We are now reading Brian's Winter which is a sequel to the Hatchet. 

We then met with Mr. McKinney's class to learn about the gardening tools we will be using.  We have been paired up with Mr. McKinney's class to plant a planter box behind Sunset. 

The ants have remained busy.  We fed them yesterday after school and instead of eating the food they carried it all down the tunnel to save it in one spot.  It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

Despite the cold weather this weekend I hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend.  20 days left when we start up next week. 

Have a great weekend!!!

Test Tomorrow

Our Statue of Liberty test will be tomorrow.  We will also be having our spelling test.  Each student is responsible for all 15 words this week.  Study tonight! 

NO HOMEWORK

There is no homework tonight.  It would be a great night to practice math facts.  We also started some long division today.  Many of the kids said that their parents showed them how to do long division last night as they worked on the homework.  That is great!

Ant Farm Day 3

After another day of digging the ants have created a few more tunnels to crawl through.  The ants are carrying the sand from the tunnels up on the top side and that is making the hills on top a lot bigger.  We are undecided if the ants have a plan for their tunnels.  We think they might be working together but might not have a leader to tell them what and where to dig.