3A: A Week at a Glance
week ending September 19, 2014
A Few Notes from Mrs. Adams
It's been another great week in 3A, with so much fun and learning taking place. I hope your children are coming home with big smiles on their faces, loving third grade!!
Birthday Treats: If you are bringing in a birthday treat, it is very important that I know about it at least one day in advance. Please send me an email with the date you plan to bring it. Thank you for your understanding.
eBoard: Did you know that our daily homework is listed on my eBoard? If your child is absent, or forgot to bring home his/her agenda, check my eBoard for the daily homework assignments.
Scholastic Book Club: Book orders will be placed next Wednesday, September 24th. Please submit your orders on or before the end of the school day Wednesday. They can be ordered with a check (made out to Scholastic) or directly online. The fastest link to order is https://orders.scholastic.com/LFVF9. This will take you directly to my page so you do not have to put in a class number.
A Visit from the Rotary Club
We reviewed some dictionary skills, such as finding words, looking at multiple definitions, and noticing the parts of speech. We looked up words and talked about them. For example, we learned that a "frock" is the same as a dress. We also talked about the word "gyrate", and the Rotary Club invited some volunteers to gyrate for their classmates! It gave everyone a laugh. Take a look at our videos and pictures below!
Fun in 3A
Science has been tons of fun. We have been observing our Brassica plants, measuring them using our centimeter measure sticks, transplanting the plants so they don't compete for space, and watering our plants so they grow fast and strong! We learned that the Brassica plant is a fast growing plant, so its life cycle will be complete in less than a month. Much faster than a regular plant outside. And we also learned about seed leaves verses true leaves. Seed leaves come from a new seed, and are usually heart-shaped and rounded. When true leaves appear, the seed leaves die and crumple off. True leaves are usually pointy.
We were lucky enough to go to the school garden during the week (thanks to our garden mom, Lynn Raus). We played a pollination game, which was a lot of fun, but very messy (and gross!). We had to pretend we were birds and each got our own straw. We had to suck up pollen (which was really liquid jello) and deposit it into a team jar. Whichever team filled the jar first were the fastest team to pollinate. This race showed us how pollen spreads from one plant to another.
Finally, in science, we learned about bees. Did you know that there are three kinds of honey bees? The queen, drones, and worker bees. The worker bees make up about 90% of the colony and are all females. They work hard to build the hive and locate food for their colony. The drones are responsible for fertilizing the eggs that the queen lays. The drones only make up 10% of the colony, and once they fertilize the eggs, they become lazy and get kicked out of the hive (and die). We had a blast learning all about the bees, and next week, we are going to even get to experiment with real (dead) bees! Can't wait!