We had another awesome day!

In the morning we wrote a procedure for baking pumpkin seeds. We followed our own procedure and then enjoyed the seeds from the pumpkins we carved yesterday.

After nutrition break we worked on finishing our spooky tree art from the other day. Then we did a skeleton hand craft.

At the end of the day we worked on the good copies of our spooky narratives.

A few more items!

A big thank you to Ashawnee for bringing in some of our pumpkins!

We will be having a class Halloween party on Thursday. Students may, but are not required to, bring in a snack to share with the class. I am encouraging healthy options, as I am sure the kids are going to collect lots of candy that night! However, if you already have a treat in mind, please feel free to send it!  Please ensure that all homemade and store bought items are nut free. Also, if you are thinking of sending fruit, please do not send kiwi. Thank you!

Today we completed pumpkin investigations. Students worked with a small group to predict if pumpkins sink or float, to estimate and measure the weight of a pumpkin, the number of lines around the pumpkin, the circumference, and the number of seeds. After that, students scooped out the pumpkins, counted the seeds and designed a face for their pumpkins. Last, we carved out the faces. 

A little video of us having some fun!

This is an exciting week. I plan on updating the blog with photos more often this week, as we do have a lot going on! We have had the computers in our room a couple of times in the past week to try using www.scootpad.com. The students all have their user ID and password stapled in the front of the agenda.  Congratulations to Ben, who has been in the top 10 on the leader board for all of 3rd graders who are signed up!

Today we also made use of the school's new iPads. We learned how to navigate through the screens and find apps to use. It was a day to explore, so students tried a variety of apps that had previously been downloaded.

In writing the students are almost all done the rough copies of their spooky narratives. I have given most a star (a strength) and an arrow (a next step) and conferenced with almost everyone. Tomorrow we will start our good copies and finish conferences.  

In math we have wrapped up our graphing unit. We will be completing pumpkin investigations this week, which will allow us to use estimation and measurement. After that, we will start a patterning unit.

In art we started a spooky tree scene. We need more time to finish them tomorrow. We will also be doing another piece of art tomorrow related to Halloween. Here we are working hard on our art. More to be posted soon!

Here we are painting the backgrounds.

Carefully painting the tree branches...

Tomorrow is picture day!

In language we have been talking about how to use quotation marks.  The students wrote a short conversation and used macaroni for the quotation marks and commas.  All of this has been in preparation for our narrative story writing.

Today we filled out story maps for our spooky narratives.

In science we started an experiment that we will continue to follow over the next few weeks.  We are finding out if a bean seed can sprout without soil.  We placed seeds in a wet paper towel, zipped it up in a plastic bag, and hung them on the window.  Over the next week we will check them to see what happens.  Some of our predictions were that the seed would die, the seed would do nothing, and the seed would sprout in less than a week.  We also made a few other bags.  One has a seed and lots of water, but no paper towel.  Another has a paper towel, but no water.  The last one has paper towel and water, but no sunlight.

QSP orders are due on Friday.
Scholastic orders are due tomorrow.
Pick your pose and background for picture day are due by picture day.

Today we had a busy day!  Ask your child about the Kindness to Animals presentation they watched today.

This morning we worked on using adjectives in our writing.

Here are some of our new and improved sentences with adjectives.

In math we have been continuing our work with bar graphs.  Today the students made a survey question and then surveyed the class to collect their data.  Tomorrow they will use the data collected to create a bar graph.

The food drive is still on for the next 2 days!

Yesterday in math the students made turkeys following a glyph. Today we talked about the data we could get from the turkeys. First we made a bar graph as a whole group about the kind of turkey meat our class liked. Then the students collected the data about the kinds of Thanksgiving foods the kids in our class like. They did this by looking at the colours of the turkey feathers and keeping tallies for each. After that, they created their own bar graphs.

In art we are finishing up our pumpkin pastel drawings.

In language we started talking about narrative writing. We read Stellaluna today and discussed how it was written with a beginning (setting and characters introduced), a middle (problem and buliding suspense), and and end (solution to the problem). We will be talking about adjectives for the next couple of days and work on using them in our writing to make it 'juicy'.