Battle of the Books & Math Centers

CC and JA are practicing their double digit addition at this math center.

CR and LG celebrate their first success on division problems.

This week the 3rd graders began having battles for The Battle of the Books.

CU and MA at a math center.

AB and GF working on math.

Making Movies

Guest bloggers: Cooper and Tanner
In Mrs. Schimel class we do a thing called Todaysmeet.com. Todaysmeet is were you practice writing focus. writing focus is capitals, punctuation, and correct spelling to. It is so cool. Today we answered her question, "What are we going to report on?" We get to make a movie about something. I am going to make a movie about the NFL and Tanner is going to report on hunting deer and elk. It is going to be really fun. Here is what it looks like when we answer her on the computer.

Happy Thanksgiving

Extra Mile award winners!

Our reading buddies came and we made these turkey cookies with them.

We are thankful for our wonderful reading buddies.

We completed our calendar art finally. It turned out even better than I imagined it.

Basket/Bingo Night

On Thursday, November 18, students and families are invited to join the fun at the Basket and BINGO event/fundraiser from 6:30 to 8:00 pm in the cafeteria. BINGO cards are available for $1, which includes popcorn and a drink. you can buy raffle tickets for chances to win any of the 13 themed baskets. Thank you to everyone for sending in so many wonderful items and to everyone in our Parents Club.

We are making the coolest calendar ever!
GF brought in the most money for our Read A Thon!
As a school we collected just over $3,000. Thank you everyone.

We have been finding creative ways to learn our multiplication facts.

Look out, we are getting very good!

Scrapbooking & Cookies

We scrapbooked some of our photos from Spirit Week.

It is fun to see how much of our writing skills transfer into our everyday writing.

Skills to look for:

Capital letters

Correct punctuation

Complete sentences

Organization

So descriptive words

A few students made a surprise for the rest of the class today.

Yummmm! No Bake cookies with LG's famous recipe.

I think they were a hit.

Eric Kimmel Visits

Eric Kimmel, one of our most favorite authors came to our school on Friday!

Here he is with GP.

TD went to his website and asked him a question before he came, and she was lucky enough to get his autograph on the printed version of her question. She also was invited to sit in on an interview with him. I predict TD will be an author someday.

Book Fair & Bingo/Basket Auction

Today we previewed the books for sale at the Book Fair.

There are many good books to purchase if you are interested. Books are set up in the gym and will possibly be open during conferences.

We are collecting "coffee" items for the basket auction. We appreciate anything you can send to make our basket nice and full.

Spirit Week

REMINDER!

Your child needs to return their S.T.A.R reading sheet with their reading goal completed to be able to attend the Skate Party on Tuesday. Sheets HAVE TO BE IN THE OFFICE BY 8:15 ON FRIDAY!

Friday we had our first Awards Assembly. Here are the students that we honored this month.

Our class also won the golden whistle award in P.E. AND the golden book for being so responsible in the library.

We also participated in a short video of our school wide Mustang Moments. This is the "News" that we are broadcasting about every other month. Here CC is acting as the teacher, while JA and CF are acting as the parents in a conference. Come by early during conferences to view these videos on the laptop outside my classroom (10 - 15 minutes early should do it).

Waiting for the Awards Assembly to begin. We were dressed in orange and black to support our decisions to be drug free. Orange you glad to be drug free!

We had such a great time dressing up for Spirit Week! Here is sports day.

Wacky Wednesday

Pajama Day!

The Pumpkin Patch

So much happened last week I got behind. This week I will be posting a lot of pictures to make up for it. Stay tuned. Let's start with the visit to the pumpkin patch.

The Math Challenge

Last week we had some Administrators come through our classroom to experience what it is like to learn in our second and third grade classroom. We have been looking for some competition, so who better than a few "Expression Rookies?" We asked them if they would go against us on our math facts. Thankfully they said, "SURE!" Watch the video below to see how fun learning is.
(Video recorded by CR)

OAKS TESTING

3rd graders will be taking their first math OAKS test this Friday!

Please make sure to get to bed early Wednesday and Thursday night and have nutritious meals. We have looked at the practice test and are ready to give it our best shot. We need a 212 to meet benchmark.

Leadership Opportunites

Mrs. Thorne is so good about letting students lead our school programs.

She came in the other day and asked if we would help teach what Spirit Week is going to be like this year. We quickly accepted and here is what we looked like.

I might be able to upload the video soon of how it all turned out.

A couple reminders:

1. Please keep recording your reading on the S.T.A R sheet, we want to have 100% participation this month. Remember to turn in your sheet by 8:15 on Nov. 5th to be able to attend the skating party.

2. Be collecting pledges for your reading if you want to help raise money for McKay kids.

3. Have fun reading the books that we will use in our Battle of the Books later this winter.

4. Do you have some coats you would like to donate to our Coats For Kids project?

Read A Thon and Cookies

We celebrated great school behavior with TP's famous no-bake cookies (Monkey Moments).

Thank you Mrs. P. (Do you want to share your recipe?)

We kicked of our Read A Thon last week. We are hoping that we can get 100% participation reading. Raising money as we read will be the icing on the cake.
Our second graders wrote the best stories last week. Here is JA with his.

Here is AB reading his story as JA shows his illustration.

This group has been working on this project for weeks and it is finally done.

All Kinds of Reading

Mrs. Thorne came in today so we could teach her how to play our fun math card game.

See if your child can teach you how to play.

Yesterday we met in the library and Mrs. Miltenberger explained S.T.A.R reading.

Second graders are to read 5 hours this month, while third graders are to read 6 hours.

Record your time read each day on the S.T.A.R sheet that comes home tomorrow and then turn it at the end of the month. Students will earn a charm and hopefully fall in love with reading. We will also be participating in a Read A Thon. Sending information on it tomorrow, look in backpacks.

Would you like to see your child's writing? Click on this site and look for their name. We have been working on writing complete sentences with the following criteria:

Begin with capital, end with punctuation, correct spelling, and a complete sentence. We are using the vocabulary words, nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

www.todaysmeet.com/schimel

I will leave this site up so you can pop in from time to time and see our improvement.

Pumpkin Patch!

Yes, we will be going to the pumpkin patch this year. We will be traveling with the kindergartners on October 25th at 8:30. Please send $3 to cover the cost of the pumpkin.

Book Review

KM read this story and made us a Book Review even though it made her really nervous.