Happy New Year !

Happy New Year! I am so thrilled to be back in the classroom with your wonderful children.  They came in this morning and got right to work!

We are starting 2014 off on a positive note with each student (and myself) by choosing "One Little Word" to be our focus for the year. Today we reflected back on 2013 and thought about goals for 2014 and then each of us chose one word that represents the change we want to see in ourselves over the next year. I was really impressed with how much though they put into this and loved the choices they came up with. Some of our words include: love, encourage, focus, create, challenge, kindness, and balance, just to name a few. We will be doing some other writing activities with these words throughout the year.

In language arts, we will begin a unit on reading and writing poetry. Science this week is a quick review of weather and the water cycle, and then spending some time learning about groundwater and surface water. I've got a fun experiment lined up for later in the week! In math, we are reviewing 2D and 3D shapes, and then learning about symmetry and congruent shapes.

Homework starts up again this week! Their homework folders will go home on Tuesday and need to be returned on Friday. This week there are 2 math word problems to solve, along with their daily reading of at least 20 minutes. There is no spelling list / word work this week. I am still trying to determine how I want to handle homework in class, so for at least the next few weeks, I am sticking with the Star Homework that the other third grade teachers use. You should be familiar with it from earlier in the year. Please let me know if you have any questions.

I'll update again over the upcoming weekend with some pictures from our first week of 2014. Have a great week!