Third Grade Newsletter
Mrs. Brenda Martin
January 6-10, 2014
*Happy New Year! Welcome back to school!
*Please note that next week’s homework will be a little different than
usual. I will be sending home multiplication flashcards for the
students to practice 10 minutes each night. Now is the time for
memorization! The will also have a chapter book about Martin Luther
King Jr. to read 20 minutes each night. Thank you for your help with
this. (no spelling homework or quiz next week)
*We have leftover graham crackers from the gingerbread house
making escapade, so we are eating them each morning for snack.
*Religion: We completed a backlog of “Explaining God’s Word”
activity sheets. The Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments are
rules/laws that teach us how to act lovingly to others.
*Read aloud story: Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
*Weekly Reader: A powerful storm tore through the Philippines in
the fall. The island nation is working to recover.
*Math: We are working on memorizing our multiplication facts!
*Science: We have begun a new unit on the solar system. We
watched a short video about each of the planets. The students
began working on a “Planet Packet.”
*Handwriting: cursive d
*Art: The students used a crayon resist technique. They drew the
sun and planets in the solar system. Then they painted over it with
watercolor paint. They look stunning!
*Social Studies: I did a demonstration for the class using a dark
room, a light bulb, and the globe. The students watched as the globe
rotated around the “sun” to create seasons each year. This activity
tied in nicely with what we are learning in Science. We also studied
a landform map and the regions of the United States.
*Second Step: We began a new unit about empathy training. We will
be learning about how to identify and understand what other people
might be feeling.
*Journal: What was the best thing that happened to you over
Christmas break?
*Grammar: past, present, future-tense verbs; sentence combining
with verbs and nouns; using quotation marks
*Writing: The students wrote rough draft and final copies of
congratulatory letters to Ms. D.
*Science center: The students rotated through the final center in
this grouping of centers.
*Literacy centers: The students began rotating through literacy
centers: Top 10, Synonyms, Antonyms, ABC Order, Draw & Write,
Real or Make-Believe, It’s in the Mail
*Reading: The students finished up reading a chapter book about
Helen Keller. We began a new story called Moses Goes to a Concert.