Exploring Owl Pellets

As disguisting as it sounds, we broke apart REAL owl pellets on Friday. It took the boys and girls awhile to get warmed up to this experiment, but after a few minutes of freaking out they were totally engaged!
Before long, they were taking their gloves off to handle the owl pellet with bare hands.

They worked really hard to try to find out what kind of animal their owl had been eating on.

You would have been totally amazed at what they found: pelvic bones, skulls, scapulas, etc.

The boys and girls had a bone identification that they used to compare their owl pellet bones to. This sheet helped them determine what kind of animal their owl had attacked: mice, shrew, mole, etc.

I wanted to say a special thanks to Mrs. Mary Laney for coming to school to help us with this investigation. We could not have done it without the exta hands.

This Week's Story: Rugby and Rosie

Our first story in our friendship unit is "Rugby and Rosie." This is a precious story about a friendship between two dogs. Please encourage your child to read this story at least twice before Friday. Reading this story can be recorded on the reading log.

Counting Bones

Today the boys and girls tried to figure out how many bones are in our skeleton. The students studied pictures of our bones and tried to come up with a number. Here Ashley and Madeline are counting the bones in our legs and feet.
This group is counting the number of bones in our hands and arms.

Gracie and Abbey are counting the bones in our skull.

We came together as group and shared our findings. We finally agreed that our body has 206 bones.

A BONE TEST will be next Tuesday, August 24. The children have the bones they are required to locate highlighted in their Science Folder. There will be a word bank.

Just a little PRAISE!

My sweet daddy finally received some positive results today from the doctor. Please pray for him as he continues to battle cancer!! For more info click on the link "Smith Family Blog" on the side of this page. My sister keeps a blog updating our daddy's progress.

WoW! We did a lot this Monday!

First, the boys and girls participated in their first THIRD GRADE store. Thanks to our wonderful parents, we were able to fill our baskets with some great items.
Today's most popular baskets were the $1.25, $3.oo, and $5.oo. The more expensive baskets will become more popular when the children decide to start saving instead of spending.

When the children came out, they went to the BANK first to cash their checks.

Ethan was our cashier for the store this week. Once the children made a decision on what they wanted to buy, they went to the cashier.

Ethan was trained today by his mother, Tracy Wallace.

There was lots of shopping going on in Third Grade commons today.

Waiting to get their checks cashed at the bank.

Da'veon could not decide!

I wanted to say a special thanks to this wonderful lady, Mary Laney! She is a lifesaver! Thanks to her our store was possible today. She came and helped me price and organize the items for the store last Friday, and then she help schedule workers for today's grand opening. Thanks, Mary!!!!

We started our first science unit today by decorating our science folders.

Our first unit is Human Body. I introduced this unit today by taking the children outside to jump rope.

They observed one another as they each jumped rope.

As they observed one another, they took note of which body parts moved while jumping rope.

The boys and girls also jotted down any other observations that sparked an interest to them.

We ended today's activity by sharing what we each observed. Then, we started a word bank of important vocabulary words to learn during this unit.

Lastly, we starting CURSIVE writing! You would have thought I gave them a million dollars. They were quieter today during cursive than they were during independent reading time! Ha! Ha!

Today's letter was the letter lowercase i. We will learn the lowercase t later this week.

Practice makes PERFECT!!!

Reconciling our credits and debits

We spent Friday afternoon tallying our credits and debits from the week. This is what our notebooks look like.
The children thought they were cool using calculators.

All the boys and girls were thrilled to death to write themselves a check.

We get to go shopping today!!!!

Wish List

First of all I want to say thank you for all the things that have already been sent in this week! I feel like it is Christmas morning when the boys and girls walk in. Items Still Needed:

STORE ITEMS (FIRST STORE IS MONDAY MORNING)

Ink Cartridges or gift cards to HELP purchase: HP 94/95 and HP 56/57!!!!!!

More Clipboards ( This so the children are not confined to their desk all day.)

A Deck of Cards (For MATH purposes)

Guess Who game (Inside recess)

Stapler and Staples (I need two: one for me, one for the kiddos)

Teacher notepads and stickers

Thanks so much for your help and support! Teachers are struggling with only $100.00 from the State to purchase supplies. FYI, I have already used my STATE money to purchase Weekly Readers and Science Scoop for the students.

Look at cute hall display....

Here are few close-ups!

Our FIRST Thursday in 3rd Grade

We read one of my favorite books today, The Kissing Hand. I am partial to raccoons due to my name. With that being said, I took this opportunity to do some "raccoon" activities. First, we read the story together on the elmo.
Then, the boys and girls looked at some non-fiction books and the internet to discover 5 facts about raccoons.

Next, they took each letter of the word RACCOON to describe themselves. For example, my acrostic poem would look like this:

R=runner

A=always on time

C=can run a marathon

C=cake is one of my favorite food (with lots of icing)

O=organized

O=obsessed with exercising

N=neat freak (The boys and girls came up with this one!)

Then, they spent time writing a story about a raccoon named Ricky.

Third Day in Third Grade

On the 3rd day of 3rd grade, we stayed busy. First the boys and girls worked on this packet that consisted of lots of activities that revolved around the number 3. Next, the boys and girls went on a classmate scavenger hunt.
They went around the room and pretty much interviewed each other. For example, "Is your birthday in September? Does your family have a blue car? Can you play the piano?"

Lastly, we read Chrysanthemum.

Ask your child about this book? It is so good!

After reading this story about Chrysanthemum having 13 letters in her name, the students put together unfix cubes according to number of letters in their names.

After they put their cubes together, they put a sticker on each cube with the letters of their names.

We lined them up to see who had the most letters in their name (Reese Anne) and the least number of letters in their name (Eli). Then we discovered that 7 letters in a name was the most common in our classroom.

The boys put all their cubes together to see how many letters were in all their names together (54 letters).

The girls did the same. We discovered that the girls have 59 letters in all their names.

We put them all together and discovered that our class has 113 letters in all.