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