Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a happy and restful winter vacation. It has been great to see everyone's smiling faces back at school this week. :) Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2012!
Thank You: Thank you all so much for the generous class gift certificate to Target! I used it over winter break and was able to buy a new, warm winter coat with it. Thank you so much. Mr. Moskauski and I also had the chance to use The Olive Garden birthday gift and have a date out. We had a great time and still have some money left over to go back again--yum, yum! Thank you all for these special gifts!
Thank you to Ms. Coonse (Schuyler's mom) and Ms. Cooley (Sage's mom) who generously donated their time to come and stay with the class to give me the extended lunch. I had a nice time out with the third grade teachers out to lunch. The children had a great time with you! :)
EOG Test Practice Online: Below you will find links to third grade EOG test preparation practice. The questions on the links are from released test items from previous years, and are formatted the way the EOG's are. These are great to practice at home. We will be doing EOG prep practice in school, but additional support at home would be appreciated. The more the children practice with the test fomat, the better they will do on the actual tests. My recommendation is to let the children do the problems on their own, then review and discuss the problems together. Talk about any incorrect answers and help the children to see and understand any errors. You may begin looking at these now, but don't overwhelm the children by doing too much at one time. I would suggest spacing out the practice until May and also doing more practice closer to May. Also, I recommend making it as fun as possible! :-) Make it family time as something you can do together. Another idea is to make it like a game by keeping record of the scores for each practice and having the children trying to beat their own score each time. On another note, a lot of the math the children have not yet been taught, as some of the objectives will be taught later on throughout the year. You may want to just expose your child to the math, but also revisit it closer to the actual EOG's. Any questions with EOG practice, please let me know.
Mystery Reader: The children have loved having Mystery Readers each Friday! We have had many special family members come in and share their love of reading with the class. This week is our last scheduled reader, and we need more volunteers! If you would like to sign up, you may sign up at: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/mystery377
Snack Donations Needed: Mr. Gibson was such a big help this morning and bagged up the last of our class community snacks. This will last us the next few days, but we will be in need of snack donations soon. Any donations of healthy snacks would be greatly appreciated.
Book Orders: I am sending home Scholastic Book Club orders in the homework folder's today. You can also shop for books online. Please see the tab on the sidebar of this blog for directions for ordering online.
Raleigh Rescue Mission: Making the welcome kits for the Raleigh Rescue Mission was a huge success! The third grade raised an amazing $275! We filled Welcome Kit baggies with needed toiletries for homeless members of of our community. The children also wrote very sweet, warm and encouraging notes that were included in the bags. I am so proud of the children's big hearts and sense of compassion for others.
Raleigh Rescue Mission: Making the welcome kits for the Raleigh Rescue Mission was a huge success! The third grade raised an amazing $275! We filled Welcome Kit baggies with needed toiletries for homeless members of of our community. The children also wrote very sweet, warm and encouraging notes that were included in the bags. I am so proud of the children's big hearts and sense of compassion for others.
Community Service: Speaking of service to others, the children have also been doing a fabulous job with helping out in our school community. We meet with our first grade Book Buddies every other week. We have also begun this week helping out in