Mega Scarf Company!

Production for the Mega Scarf Company begins this week! We are so excited to become 'business owners' and produce scarves to make money to donate towards the local Dream Come True Playground! For our economic unit, the students have learned all about money, spending, saving, making economic choices, bartering, natural resources, human resources, and capital resources. This unit, and our Mega Scarf Company, allows the student to integrate this information in a fun and realistic way! The students will produce the scarves, advertise for the company, and then sell the scarves to the school community! We hope you will support our company! The scarves go on sale today for only $5 apiece and they are adorable!

Multiplication Mania!

Keister third graders are busy learning all about multiplication! You can help at home by having your child practice their basic facts for a few minutes each night. You can use flash cards or games to practice. If you are using flash cards, try just using part of the deck of cards (such as the 2's, 5's, and 10's) until your child shows mastery of those facts. Then add in more difficult cards, such as 3's and 4's, one number at a time, until your child can do all cards quickly. If you choose to use games, you can play a simple game such as rolling a few dice and having your child multiply the numbers together to find the product or playing a simple game of "multiplication war" using a deck of playing cards. It is also fun to play multiplication facts games online using websites on my portaportal (see the link from the Keister homepage for lots of ideas!) or if you have an iPad or smartphone there are many great free apps for multiplication fact practice! Try to make the challenge of learning these facts fun for everyone by trying something new every few days. Play a family game and challenge each other! How fast can you learn those facts?

Try These Fun Sites!

Sometimes students need some extra practice at home. Why not use your computer to make it more engaging? Try some of these websites for some extra practice with place value!

http://www.learningbox.com/Base10/BaseTen.html

http://www.free-training-tutorial.com/place-value/clickthedigit.html

http://www.funbrain.com/tens/index.html

Learning Is Fun!

The students had a great time learning all about bird beak adaptations using the iPads in science! On the iPads the students were able to manipulate beaks of many different birds and see how these beaks would be adaptations for these birds.

Our Current Units

We have just completed our first unit in mathematics, our unit about place value. We will now be practicing some mental math skills with finding the sum and differences of larger numbers using different estimation strategies before moving into paper and pencil methods. Practicing how to estimate numbers is so valuable as it helps you determine if your answer is reasonable.

In science, we are working with a unit about animal adaptations. The students are learning about both physical and behavioral adaptations and how these adaptations help animals to meet their needs for survival. We will be discussing food chains next week! The students have science for 4 1/2 weeks before switching to social studies (with Mr. Yoder) where they will begin to learn about diversity and map skills.

Our first literacy theme of the year is "Off to Adventure" and we are reading stories that are fictional and have various ties to the "adventure" theme. The students are practicing the skills of predicting and inference in our current story.

Our First Week!

We had a wonderful first week together! I am loving this amazing class of 3rd graders! They are sweet, respectful and want to learn something new each day! Awesome! We have spent time learning the routines of a new school year and how to write in our homework planner, pick great reading books, write our classroom bill of rights, etc. We have accomplished a great deal of things in just 5 short days! I can't wait to see what the next week brings!

Looking Forward to a Great Year!

Can you believe it is time for school? Summer sure did fly by! I am looking forward to a great year with new changes, challenges and excitement! As many of you know, I have taught 4th grade at Keister Elementary for the past 7 years. I am looking forward to teaching 3rd grade this upcoming year! What a fun new change for me! It is always good to have professional challenges and excitement and I am honored to have you and your children in my classroom this year. We are going to learn many new things together! I hope you enjoy reading this blog and commenting on anything you read as we go through this year together! Love, Mrs. Slykhuis

It's been a great year!

What a fabulous "4th Grade Celebration" we had today! The power point showed what a long way these students have come and how cute and amazing they really are! (Thanks Mrs. Duda for making me cry!) I have enjoyed every last minute of this school year with your wonderful children. Thank you for trusting me with your treasures everyday. I hope they have gained something from being a part of our learning community. May you enjoy your summer together and best of wishes for a smooth transition to middle school next year! I am always just a click or phone call away if you ever need anything!

Love,

Mrs. Slykhuis

Wax Museum Photos... Look at the last few posts to see a few more!

More Photos!

Wax Museum Pictures!

Wax Museum!

The students did an amazing job presenting their speeches as historical figures at our annual Wax Museum! I was so proud of their efforts to read biographies, research from various sources, take careful notes, organize their notes into an expository writing piece, and then write a meaningful speech to deliver at our museum. The students also created wonderful background displays and dressed so appropriately for their chosen figures! What a lot of effort for a great day! Take a look at some of the pictures from the museum!

SOL Test Dates

We all have busy lives, so here are some upcoming dates that you should mark on your calendar as you are planning your spring and early summer events! These are the dates of the SOL tests your child will be taking in Virginia Studies, Language Arts, and Mathematics this year.

Thursday, May 19 Virginia Studies

Tuesday, May 24 Language Arts

Thursday, June 2 Mathematics

I have also added more dates of interest to the "upcoming events" section of the blog! Take a look and add those to your calendar as well. There are a lot of fun and interesting events happening as the year seems to be winding up! (Get me some kleenex please!!!)

Eagle Watch!

For the past week, we have been keeping a watchful eye on a nest of eaglets who have been newly hatched via a live webcam! This nest of eaglets is located in Iowa, and the mom & dad have been active in the nest and giving us a great view of their behaviors as we are studying animals right now in science. This has been fascinating! If you are interested in seeing this live webcam from home, paste this link into your browser window to see the eagles for yourself! You can also get to this link by visiting my portaportal site (from either a link from the Keister page under portaportals or portaportal.com guest access jslykhuis). The link is under the "Cool Stuff" tab labeled eagle cam. Beware there is a short advertisement when you first open the webcam feed, but then the eagles will appear!

http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html

Dr. Seuss Day!

This past week we had fun during our literacy block celebrating Dr. Seuss and his birthday! We figured that he would have turned 107 years old on March 2nd. We learned that his father was a zookeeper and he possibly got many of his ideas for the amazing creatures in his books from his father and the time he spent at the zoo! During our literacy time on "Dr. Seuss Celebration Day" we read Dr. Seuss books in partners and made story maps about what we learned from each story as many Dr. Seuss books have a strong theme. We also did a crossword puzzle with the many titles of Dr Seuss books. Did you know that his popular book Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet to see how few different words he could use in a book? We had such fun eating cupcakes, drinking punch, and even a few students got into the spirit with me dressing up as one fish blue fish, thing one or thing two, or the cat in the hat! They know I will never pass up the opportunity to wear a crazy hat! I love opportunities to tie food, crazy hats, and learning all into one! Ha! Have a great week!

Valentine's Day!

According to one student, "it was the funnest day ever!" I guess we still have a little grammar work to do this year! :) But I will agree and say we did have a great day together! We had a Valentine "Read and Roll" during literacy, we discovered how many Valentine candies really are inside a box of candy hearts and graphed the data in math, and during our content time, we had the best time of all! We made the adorable snowmen crafts your children took home (a huge thank you to Mrs. Varner for the supplies and help!) exchanged Valentines, had our Valentine box decorating contest, and had our long anticipated cookie exchange!

I must tell you just how wonderful your children are! One student accidentally took home another student's cookie plate in the rush of the end of our "great" day. The student with suddenly no cookies announced "my cookies are gone!" This seemed really odd, so we concluded it must have been an accident and surely they would return tomorrow. But another student, a terrific friend, said, "you can take home my cookies" and she gave the cookie-less friend her plate! Wow. What a pleasure it is to get to teach these wonderful students each and every day. I wanted you all to know you are doing an exceptional job as parents! There students are caring and respectful in so many ways and this is a wonderful example! And by the way, the cookies DID reappear the next day so the great friend DID get a cookie plate after all! I love happy endings, don't you?

Happy Valentine's Day! Thank you for allowing me to love your children!

4th Grade Highlights

Take a minute to watch this fun video showing some fun we have had this year so far in class! Click on the link to watch!


4th Grade Highlights

Snow Days!

I hope you are enjoying this extra family time with the snow! My children have had fun making snowmen, sledding and maybe not so much fun scooping the driveway! ha! With these snow days, the questions become, how will we "make up" the lost days? The news from school is that we will use February 11 and March 11, which were originally slated as staff development days. Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you soon!

We are half way there!

Wow! Time flies when you are having fun! I know I sure have been having fun each and every day spending time with your children. We have come a long way this year already, from our basic adding and subtracting numbers in math to learning how to multiply and do long division using several different strategies! In science, we have learned all about weather, the solar system, energy, motion and electricity! We are moving in time through Virginia's history and learning more and more reading skills each day! All of these new skills are what makes teaching such fun! The excitement is endless for learning new things, whether it is October or January! I would welcome you to come into the classroom and visit sometime to see this fun and excitement for learning for yourself sometime. We are there everyday! :) On the next half of our year!