Our New iPad

On December 16th we got a new iPad from the PTSA. We have the iPad to help us learn. We want to give them a BIG THANK YOU!!! I am looking forward to posting on the blog, doing math, recording messages and stuff like that. By the way, I am typing this on the iPad


By Mikayla

AR Party

Last week we had our AR party.We did it on Friday Dec 10th.We celebrated in Mr.Melde's classroom,and the far park. We went sledding,we watched a movie,we had snacks and a drink.We did this for a privilege for the people that made their AR goal.It was fun to see the people in the other classroom. Next time,I hope that everyone can make their AR goal.

By Emma

What! Gone again???

It seems like Ms. G and I have been gone more than we have been in class.  Meetings and workshops seem to take up more and more time this year.  One thing that I would like to do is to start sharing with you what we have been learning about.  The conference that we attended on Monday and Tuesday was one that we have been looking forward to for a long time.  I have shared a link to the website that they set up for us.  The cool thing about the Ties Conference is that it was a gathering of around 3,000 teachers, principals and superintendents that are interested in learning more about technology and making sure that it makes it into the hands of your kids.  When I think back to my third grade in a tiny Catholic school in Onalaska, WI, I am just amazed at the things that kids are using now. We didn't have a computer in the school and only one television that didn't work most days.  Then it makes me think forward to what the students of the class of 2020 will have in terms of technology.  No doubt it will be things we have not even dreamed up.

http://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/

This is a link to what I heard was the best session at the conference:

http://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/TIES10_108

Concert Day

Here is a little bit of the concert that we had today.  Enjoy!!

Winter Weather

Have to do a silly one, right?

Callie didn't make it into the picture but she got new boots!

Don't they look warm?

It sure was nice to see the kids all wearing their winter stuff today.  We will be going outside unless it is below 0 outside.  It is important for the kids to have coats, snow pants, boots, gloves or mittens, and hats.  It is also really important to label their stuff because so many kids have the same stuff.  Look for lots of pictures of being outside in the near future.

Video Conference

I know that we have already written about the video conference but there was a really nice article on the district website about it.  They even included a nice video. 

Video Conference

The video was created and posted by Johnny Germscheid who has worked for the district for a little over a year now.  If you like the video, send him a note and let him know. 

Recess

We like to play a game called KICK at recess.  We go and get a ball and take it to the soccer field.  The only rule is kick the ball to other people.  It is not like soccer because there is no net, or goalie, or teams or referee or other rules.  JUST KICK.  All we need is a ball to kick. 

We also like to play four square.  That is fun because you have to try to keep it in the square without getting it out. 

Some people like to play football.  There is lots of running and catching and throwing.

We have a problem.  There is not enough equipment to play everything we want. 

We are wondering if you have any recess stuff to donate.  We do not need brand new things.  If you have things in your garage or storage that are not being used maybe you could send them in and donate them to third grade. 

Things we would like:

Basketball
kickball
soccerball
frisbee
football
jump rope
volleyball

or anything else that might be fun for recess.

Thank you!!!

Video Conference

Today we did a video conference with the International Wolf Center.

It was a really fun and good opportunity to have. We did the video conference for more than an hour.We got to see live wolves napping. (Ask your child why the wolves were so tired.)  They showed videos of how wolf pups grow in their first year.  We had an assignment during the conference and we got to design a wolf den.  We learned about how big a den should be, that they could be above or below ground, and sometimes they even take a dried up beaver dam for their den.  We learned about what the pups look like.  Baby wolves are dark brown for blending in and their eyes are blue when they are born but they turn golden or yellow when they get older.  

We got to ask lots of questions like:

How fast can they run?

How good are they at catching their prey?

How many wolves are in the whole world?

Do they eat Bison?

What is the biggest animal they can catch? 

If you want to know the answer to these and many more questions you should ask your child. 

Enjoy the pictures!!!!! 

Another Opportunity

We are going to be having a Halloween party this Friday.  We are looking for volunteers to come in and celebrate with us.  We need people willing to organize and plan an activity or game for Friday afternoon, October 29th.  This would include buying the supplies for the activity.  We have regular school supplies if needed.  Let us know by Wednesday October 27th if you will be helping out the third graders.  Thank you!
Mr. Melde and Ms. Gustafson

Volunteer Opportunity

Below I have copied an e-mail about our Art Adventure Program.  It is a great opportunity for kids and also for parents to spend some time in the classroom.  Contact Mr. Melde if you are interested.  Ms. Gustafson's class already has a volunteer.  651-306-7346 or meldej@invergrove.k12.mn.us

If you would like for your class to participate in this program, please email me back with a volunteer name and contact information. I'll then let the Minneapolis Institute of Arts know who to expect for training and when.

Parent Volunteers need to pick ONE of the following dates for training. The dates and times for training this year's Picture Persons are as follows:

Tuesday October 26th from 10:30 am to 1:00 pm
Thursday October 28th from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Thursday November 18th from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm
Friday November 19th from 10:30 am to 1:00 pm


The theme for this year is Families, Friends and Foes and includes compelling work from African, Asian and Western European artists. The pieces can be viewed online at artsmia.org/art-adventure.
 
Please let the parent volunteers know that they are given basic training in how to identify components of art including composition, theme and style. Volunteers then teach the children this information at a few short presentations scheduled with you for January. 

Thanks so much for your help in this!!
 
Patty Moore 

Pictures from an exciting week and a half

We decided to put on lots of the pictures we took from the past week and a half.  I think that part of it is because we had lots of good ones and another part is that we would not believe it if we did not see it.  We have pictures of people donating pumpkins, pictures of the third graders sharing some of the pumpkins with the preschoolers and some pics of when we did a little science in the room with the

pumpkins.

Newspaper

Here is the link to the newspaper article the Pioneer Press did about the pumpkins being stolen.
Click here to view article

Here is the link to the news story that appeared on Fox 9 News.
TV News Report click here

Here is the link to the folow up article that the Pioneer Press did.
Click here to view article

Here is a link to the district website that has a lot of cool pictures.
Click here to view website

Weekly Calendar

I wanted to start putting in a weekly calendar to show families what will be happening here.  Most of what I put in should stay on the same day but it is always open for change.  I will add to this as more comes up and as I get better at remembering to put things on.

Tuesday 10-12-10 Day 2
Mr. Melde will be at a grade level meeting in the morning only at the district office.  There will be a substitute in the room until lunch time. 

Recorder day

Wednesday 10-13-10 Day 3
Library Checkout-  The kids are working on checking out AR books at their level. 

I think this is all for the week so far but check back.  I may add to this.

Pictures from the Week

 This is our reporter friend that came out to do an article about our pumpkins being stolen.  It was pretty cool to see how the reporter and photographer worked.

 We also had a lot of veggies left in the garden to harvest.  Next week we will start science and start learning about plant parts.

On Wednesday the firefighters came in to help us learn about how to get out of the house safely.  We got to practice crawling under the smoke to get out a door and window.  It was fun!

Tough Week

We have had a couple things happen this week that the kids are dealing with.  As most of you know we have a community garden up at Salem Hills Park.  The kids, I hope, have been talking about it because we have been doing lots of things up there.  When you really think about it a garden can be a great place to learn just about anything.  There is a lot of math that needs to happen to make a garden work.  The kids have been writing and doing art up there with things that relate to what they see and do.  There are so many books to read, both fiction and non-fiction.  There is all of this and I have not even mentioned the teamwork and planning skills it takes for kids to be good at a project like this.  I am sure you will be hearing lots more on the topic.

The other day some of the preschoolers were walking up at the park and saw that we had pumpkins.  You can probably imagine the excitement at this time of year for the little kids to see the pumpkins actually growing right within reach.  The third graders were planning on taking the little kids up to the garden and letting them help harvest the pumpkins.  I think that there was a lot of excitement on both sides.

On Monday some teachers were up there and noticed that all of the pumpkins were gone.  Someone had come in and taken all of the pumpkins from the whole garden.  The kids were pretty sad about the whole thing.  We are problem solving with them right now.  Some kids are writing letters to the editor and we are hoping to send those in early next week.

We also have had some problems with some kids "losing" things from lockers.  We do not have any idea what happened but as a result we are doing an activity this morning on stealing.  Ask your kid how it went.

Ball Chairs

Hello Parents,

One thing that we have used in Third Grade over the past couple years are ball chairs.  Those of you that have been around Salem or have had a third grader here before have seen these and possibly even purchased them for your kids before.  We have become a little smarter about how we use these tools and they show results.  In our experience the ball chairs work well for kids that need to move a lot and have a little trouble sitting during some of the lessons that kids have to sit for long periods of time.  If you would like to buy an exercise ball for your child and send it in to school to be used as a chair we would encourage it.  Here are a couple guidelines we ask you use:

Make sure that the ball fits the child by using the following sizes.
Child Height        Ball size
32-38 inches        30 cm
39-51 inches        45 cm
52-63 inches        55 cm
63-72 inches        65 cm

We would also ask that you buy one of the chairs that have feet on the bottom or have sand inside.  These things really prevent the chairs from rolling around the room.

We will spend time here training the kids to use the chairs the proper way with both feet on the floor and sitting with proper posture.  We will also teach them some exercises that they can do during breaks that always seem to help too.  We will also teach the kids that these are tools to use and not a toy.  If they are used inappropriately then they will be sent home.

Thanks so much for your help!

Ms. Gustafson and Mr. Melde

More about tie-dye

We hung up our tie-dye shirts at the garden.  We got to see all of the designs from all of the kids in our class.  We used blue, green and yellow and the colors were really cool.  The spirals were cool and the folds looked like they had two different sides.  We were all happy to get to see our shirts.  Everyone was excited to see the shirts that the other kids made too.

The shirts are coming home in backpacks today and there are directions in the Wednesday Folder.  Now the next step is to rinse, then wash then WEAR!!!!!!!

Tie Dying!

Today we tie-dyed our t-shirts.  We had a lot of fun.  First we got our t-shirts and we started rolling them   up. We had two choices of how to roll them up; a spiral or a fold. We took the t-shirts out to the hall where we had a table. We put dye on the shirts and we could choose from yellow, green, or blue. When we were done with that we set them out in the room to dry over the weekend.

The next thing we will do with our t-shirts will be to unwrap them, take clothespins, and hang them on the fence to dry. We will do this on Monday.

A big "Thank You" to all the parents and families that came into help. They gave us some of their own free time to spend with our class and that made us feel very special. Thanks for the help with our t-shirt tye-dye project.

Welcome!

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts to you this year to share stories and news about Room 24.  We have had a fun week getting to know each other.  Meeting new friends and catching up with old ones is always a good time. 

Here are a few of the things we have done together:
We got to play a little and learn a little with the iPods.
We have started journals that we will write in a lot this year.
We do a morning meeting each day. We think the game is the best part.
We have visited our community garden a couple times and even picked tomatoes that were served at lunch!
We have started making a time capsule that we will open at the end of the year.
We learned a couple letters in cursive and are excited to learn more.

Just a reminder that we will be tie-dyeing t-shirts this Friday.  Thank you for all of the volunteers.  Remember that plain white shirts need to be in by Thursday.