Happy Holidays

The holidays are almost here!

Plans are in place for a fun holiday party for Ms. Musters' Class!

The party will be on Thursday, December 16th after lunch.(1:30).

Party fun includes, contributing to their community by making cards for Sheltering Arm Senior Services (located behind our school), collecting items for the Sheltering Arms Adopt-a-Senior Gift Basket Program, making snowflakes to take home and snacking while doing so! We will deliver all the items on Thursday before the party and sing a few songs to spread some holiday cheer.

We are asking that parents donate one item off of the Sheltering Arms Pantry list (see below).

There will be a field trip permission form coming home Tuesday for Sheltering Arms.

Parents are welcome to walk over with us!

Happy Holidays!

Sheltering Arms Senior Services
Adopt-A-Senior Gift Basket Program
Gift Ideas:
• Old-fashioned telephones (work in bad weather)
• Large-numbered clocks, battery-powered
• Snuggies
• Metrolift tickets
• Taxi vouchers
• Large Print Books or Bibles
• Gift Cards for Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Kroger. Seniors can use these to purchase medicine and fresh foods.
• Postage stamps
• Easy Feet
Clothing:
• Slippers, all sizes
• Robes and night gowns
• Housecoats
• Socks
• Sports Hats
• Sweaters, sweatshirts – all sizes
• Blankets, lap robes
• Pillows
Personal Care Items:
• Cleaning and laundry supplies: detergent, cleaners, sponges
• Adult incontinence items (pull-ups, especially) all sizes, male and female
• Paper products: Toilet paper, paper towels, napkins
• Personal care products: soap, toothpaste, shampoo, etc.
• Ibuprofen and other generic medications
• Diabetic Testing Strips and Supplies
Food Items:
• Canned Vegetables: Corn, Peas, Green Beans, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, beans, mixed vegetables, etc. (low sodium when possible)
• Canned Meats: Tuna, chicken, etc.
• Canned Meals: Pasta, stews, etc.
• Canned/jars: Fruit, applesauce
• Canned soups
• Macaroni and cheese
• Canned milk
• Vegetable Oil
• Juices (no sugar added when possible)
• Ensure/Glucerna
• Spaghetti sauce
• Pasta, rice and beans, boxed and bagged
• Peanut butter
• Jelly
• Cereals: Instant and 3-minute oatmeal grits; dry cereal

Nutcracker Ballet

Third grade had wonderful seats at the ballet. The show was magnificent and everyone was mesmerized, including me! Thank you parents for helping with this event!

On our way to the Nutcracker

Having a little fun along the way!

Sinterklaas

Did you know that in The Netherlands, Sinterklaas day is December 5th and 6th. The Fantastic Frogs are learning about different holidays from different cultures. Actually, our current American version of Santa Claus came from the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas. One favorite of the Dutch children is leaving their wooden shoes (klompen) by the fireplace filled with hay and carrots for Sinterklaas' horse. The hay and carrots are replaced, of course, with special treats. We left our shoes on Friday and Monday morning we came back to school to find treats! In Ms. Musters' klompen we found a riddle that led us to our new mascot: a giant Fantastic Frog!
Dank u Sinterklaas! The day ended with a special visit from the Dutch experts: Mr. and Mrs. Musters. They also brought as a treat a special Dutch cookie called speculaas. Dank u wel!

Water Research

We are ending our water planner by working in small groups to research water on the seven continents. Students have been exploring websites on the Internet and reading books gathering facts about their continent. This will culminate in each group creating a product of their choice to present to the class.

Water Planner

The Fantastic Frogs learned a lot about water around the world. We discovered that there are people in the world who do not find water as easily as we do. Did you know that some children have to walk miles to obtain water. Through this water planner we learned the importance of conserving water. We discovered the scientific name for the water cycle: hydrologic cycle and added a new piece to the cycle - transpiration. Transpiration is the evaporation of water through the leaves of a plant. Our water acrostic poems include all this new found information. Way to go, Fantastic Frogs!

Gobble, Gobble

The Fantastic Frogs were in for a treat this week. Mrs. Sigmon, Mrs. Mackey and I came up with a great class learning experiment that involved turkeys!! The assignment: make a turkey only using supplies that were cut into one inch lengths. We used this assignment to introduce the students to our new planner: How We Organize Ourselves. The students were divided into random groups with three people. Next, they had to acquire supplies by visiting other countries (i.e. different classrooms) to see what they were exporting. Supplies could also be traded or bartered for. The end products then received an adward. Stop by next week to take a look before they disappear!

Measuement Hunt!

We are exploring the US Customary system of measuring and the Metric system. We decided to go on a hunt! We are on the lookout for anything that might be one inch, one foot or one yard in addition we are looking for items that are one millimeter, one centimeter and one meter long. Do you know how small one millimeter is?

Student Led Conferences

Thank you parent for coming and participating in this very important event. The students love to share their wealth of knowledge with you and show you their classroom. As a teacher, it is great to listen to the students expound on what they have learned.

Art A La Carte Part II

We had another very exciting Art ala Carte visit from Jackson and Patrick's moms. I am not sure what is happening, but it looks like a lot of fun. The students were very excited to paint in this new way! Thanks Moms!!!

Conserve Water!

The Fantastic Frogs worked together to create a poster that would persuade students to conserve water. You can turn the faucet off when you brush your teeth, put a brick in the toilet so it uses less water and did you know your plants only need one inch of water a week. Just a few ways that you can start conserving water today!

Student Led Conferences

Here are some eager students ready to show you all that they have learned and discovered through the two planners we have been working on. Please come to student led conferences this Wednesday from 3:00-4:00. If this time will not work, please schedule another time before or after school or during your lunch hour.

Is 1% water enough???

Throughout this planner we have been discussing the amount of water on the planet. Even though our planet is 75% water; there is only 1% of freshwater for our use. This brought up the question: Will there be enough water for us? The visit from the Water Wise lady helped us to understand that we need to be careful with the water we have now. The question is how are we going to do that? The Fantastic Frogs have been developing persuasive posters to convince us that we need to conserve water and how we should do it. Way to go!

Hydrologic Cycle

Did you know that the water cycle is also known as the hydrologic cycle? Through fiction and non-fiction stories and articles we are expanding our knowledge of the water cycle. We have added several knew vocabulary words such as: transpiration, accumulation and groundwater.

Musters' Magical Meteorites

Our Field Day T-shirt!

Congratulations to Christopher for his winning design!

Please send $8.00 and your child's size as soon as possible.

Parents you are welcome to purchase one too!

Thank you Stormy for making it happen!

Sprouts!

We are so excited to see the growth in our garden!

Toss and Talk??

Toss and Talk is part of the Envision math program. Just another way I supplement the students' learning activities. Students work with partners or small groups to solve the problem presented. This activity invites a lot of discussion to arrive at the answer. After completing we meet to discuss what we learned. One student exclaimed, " I was having a hard time with clocks, but now I understand!" Music to a teachers' ear!!!

Math Time

The students are working with partners to discuss and develop strategies for solving math problems. Scroll down, click on pause on playlist so you can hear the discussions!

Gardening Part II

Everyday, The Fantastic Frogs go grab two of our first grade buddies and go tend to the garden. We are keeping a journal of how our plants are doing. We measure, water and weed the garden.

Pumpkin Math

Pumpkin Math on PhotoPeach

Gardening!

Well, between both classes we finally figured out how to plant the seeds in the bed. Since we had three different kinds of seeds we divided the bed into three sections. Everyone is very excited to see what happens next.

Teaching First Graders

Mrs. Phillips and I signed up to share a bed in the garden. We decided it would be more fun to have the third graders teach the first graders! We were right! Mrs. Phillips class listened closely to everything my third graders had to say about producers and consumers! Next we head off to the garden to figure out how to plant the seeds.

Main Street Theater

The Fantastic Frogs had a great time on our first field trip of the year! We went to see Busy Town which tied into our community planner. The students were so excited. It was fun to watch their expressions and hear them laugh. A BIG thank you to all the chaperones!

Water Experiment Day!

Whew! So much to discover in just one day. The Fantastic Frogs visited all the third grade rooms today and experienced a different experiment with water in each room. In our room, we

made it rain! We learned about the three main types of clouds: cumulus, stratus, and cirrus and how each one looks. The cirrus clouds are too feathery and wispy to create precipitation. The cumulus cloud can turn into a cumulonimbus cloud which can make severe thunderstorms. For our experiment we created a cumulus cloud and kept adding water drops until the cloud got so heavy that it rained!

BOX TOPS

Dear Fantastic Frogs,

Quinn's mom is going to help us collect Box Tops this year! She needs you to precut and trim the box tops before sending them in.

Contest- The classroom with the most Box Tops wins a pizza party! AND Quinn's mom is going to add cupcakes as a special treat. So start looking for those box tops. Don't know where to find them?

Check out this website: http://www.boxtops4education.com/ to find out which products to look for.

Huckleberry Park

You can see from the pictures that we were all a little excited about the celebration for Huckleberry Park. Our part in the ceremony included making some hopes and wishes for the garden area. Here are a few:

• I hope and wish that all the butterflies and ladybugs will come and enjoy it forever.
• I hope the garden grows big and strong and frogs go all around the garden.
• I hope the garden will be a nice place to live for animals and a nice place for plants to grow.
• I wish that all the kids care about the garden.
• I wish all living things will be happy.

The Snowy Day

The Fantastic Frogs were very excited to participate in a world wide program involving reading! Every time The Snowy Day was read a book was donated to a child. You may continue to donate by going to Jumpstart. We still don't know the total of people who read worldwide this year, but we are hoping to beat the 2.5 million number from last year. To celebrate we created drawings using chalk on white paper.

Where We Are in Time and Place

Our first planner was about how communities are established and change over time. The focus being on our school community and city community. We explored the physical, culture, climate and government of different communities. Native Americans became a focus to compare and contrast the past and the present. One part of the Native American culture of the Southwest Region that was particular interesting was the Storyteller. The Storyteller was created by Helen Cordero who lived in New Mexico. The idea was to have an object to represent the great storytellers in her tribe, namely her grandfather. The stories are a way for the elders of the tribe to teach and pass lessons on to the young children. We have created our storytellers and are in the process of revising and editing our stories. Thank you to Sophia's dad for sharing with us a Storyteller from the same tribe as Helen Cordero! That was an exciting surprise!!

Money!

In math this week, we explored money. We learned about the different coins, their value and reviewed how to use dollar and cents notation. With a partner, we discovered different ways to make the same amount. Next, we used the symbols for greater than, less than to compare two amounts. Finally, we went shopping to discover how to give change.

Class Party

The class party was a huge success! The students had so much fun playing on the field and the parents had a great time visiting.

Art A La Carte

I would have to say that the first Art ALa Carte was a huge success. Thank you to Patrick's and Jackson's mom!! Students explored still art and then created their own using a special paint made with Kool-aid. All I can say is it smelled good in our room!!! and thank you to our class photographer for recording it all in these great pictures.

How to Pass a Law

As part of our planner, we are learning how a government helps a community to grow. In this video, we have the House of Representatives and the Senate debating about a bill that they want to become a law. In the end, we have two new laws for our community. One is called the GET IN LINE law and the other is the LEARNING law.

Self Portraits

We read the book Camile and the Sunflowers which is a historical story of Vincent VanGogh. We discovered information about communities in the past and how different things are in today's world. The one thing we discovered that was the same is that people are different and we need to respect those differences. Next, we decided to try portraits like Vincent Van Gogh. We will use the resulting artwork as a poem writing activity.

Graphing

Last week we learned all about graphing. We gathered data about our first names and made a tally chart. Next, we took the information from the tally chart and created a bar graph. Then we made it a little more interesting by using manipulatives to represent the value of our names based on an alphabet chart. The resulting bar graph was very interesting. We could easily determine who miscounted, whose name was longest (Christopher-103 cubes!) and whose name was shortest (Cami- 27 cubes). We also discovered easy ways to count large quantities of things. Way to go, Fantastic Frogs!

Twenty Minutes!

We usually end the week by turning in our twenty minutes for Fun Fridays! Remember I spoke about this at open house. The students will lose minutes for not following the essential agreement which is : Work Hard and Be Nice. We decided that this one rule applies to all areas of our community. Here are a few examples of the ways The Fantastic Frogs decided to use this time.

Writers At Work

The Fantastic Frogs just had their first experience with the writing cycle. We have written stories to go along with our community creations. However, our stories are about what happens when a school, or bank or post office do not exist in a community. We have learned that everyone in the community needs to work together.

Testing??

Yes, we take a lot of tests in third grade! You can see in the picture we have our 'offices' set up so that we are not bothered if someone else finishes early. This picture was taken by the photographer of the week: Haven.

Who are the Fantastic Frogs

The Fantastic Frogs had a great time working together to complete this acrostic poem project. It was great listening to them help each other come up with adjectives or words that begin with the letter in their names. You could tell that we have already become a third grade community. Way to go, Fantastic Frogs!

Homework News

Get a Voki now!



Parents, we will be attempting to complete our homework via a WIKI this week in class. Please have your student show you what we worked on in class. I am hoping that this week everything will be up and running. Any questions or concerns, please email me via the WIKI. Thank you, Ms. Musters

Fantastic Frogs

ready to hop into the classroom! Exactly what a teacher needs to see first thing in the morning...smiling, happy, eager faces!!

Math Problem Solvers

Scroll down to click pause on playlist so you can hear The Fantastic Frogs at work!

We were presented a real world math problem today when Mrs. Blakeslee arrived with a huge box of kleenex and said that they had to be divided equally among the third grade teachers. Listen in as these amazing third graders found interesting ways of solving the problem.

All About Me

Our first writing assignment was to tell about ourselves using acrostic poetry. It was great listening to the students help each other find words to match the letters in their names. Everyone helped each other just like a real community! Next we turned those acrostic poems into a work of art. Finished projects will be hanging in our hallway. They are a must see!!

Daily Five

The Daily Five is a literacy work time where students are working on improving specific reading skills. As you can see, we like to read!! Students are practicing read to self and listening to self.

Math Centers 101

We begin by learning how to work with the math manipulatives. Students were introduced to the math centers and learned how to choose work. After exploring, we have a math meeting to discuss any new information that was discovered while working. I like how the Fantastic Frogs already found ways to challenge themselves.

Problem Solvers!

Third graders started working on their problem solving skills the first day of school. We are using the interactive smartboard to show each other how to solve a problem. Each day we will be tackling a new problem and applying strategies to solve.

The Third Day in Third Grade

Day Three!!! We decided to do things in threes. I am sure you already heard that The Fantastic Frogs had three recess times. We counted by threes, we found patterns in threes, and we played addition games with multiples of threes. What a fun day of learning!

32 Degrees

It really isn't that cold!! The students are welcome to bring a jacket or sweater, but they must be school colors red, white or blue. I would have to say the temperature is perfect for teachers!

T-shirts??

One of our community building activities was to create a t-shirt that had our favorite things on it. It could be favorite things to eat, read or do. We also included what we were experts on. After completing the t-shirts, each student presented the information to their new class.

Student Search

The Fantastic Frogs had a great first week! We spent some time getting to know everyone in this new third grade community. The students are going on a search to find a student who meets the criteria stated. The students had to interview each other and learn everyone's names.

Note to Parents about Carpool

Dear Parents:

In order to ensure a safe and orderly dismissal and so that we can account for every child, we respectfully ask all children in grades 1 through 5 be picked up from the cafeteria only. Kindergarten parents may pick up at the classroom at 2:45. If you arrive at school before 2:45, you must get a visitors’ badge from the front office and wait for your children in the cafeteria, front rotunda, or outside unless you are going to Kindergarten at 2:45.

This will ensure that teachers know the whereabouts of all children at all times. Thank you for helping us keep your children safe.

John Baker
Principal
Mark Twain Elementary

Welcome to your new pad!

It's official the class lists are posted! Can you believe it is only two more days until third grade begins. I hope everyone is as excited as I am! The room is looking very clean and is ready for everyone on Monday morning. So, hop on in to your new pad!!

It's Time!!

Yes, summer has come to an end and it was time to go back to the classroom to get ready for another great year!! I should have taken a picture of what it looked like when I walked in the room. Everything piled high, rug rolled up in the corner, and nothing on the walls. It's time to get ready for another group of eager third graders! I can't wait to meet everyone!

Good-Bye Discoverers!

For our last moment together, The Discoverers banded together to take all the air out of our classroom pool. Yes, you read that correctly. The students were surprised on the last day to find a huge pool in the middle of the classroom. We spent the morning working on portfolios, reading in the pool, and playing games together one more time. Thank you to all the parents for your help in the many events in our classroom. We can not do it without your support. Thank you Discoverers for the journey we went on together this year. Love Ms. Musters

Celeste, Allison, Ms. Musters

Kamden, Grant, Grant, Hayden

Carlos, Carly, Colton, Elizabeth

Joshua, Philip, Rachel, Davil

Jackie, Marcello, Tristan, Keily