This Week's News

This Monday we went to the Morton Arboretum for our first field trip. We learned about the water cycle and how nature recycles its materials. It was very cold! BRRRR! Tuesday was Veteran’s Day. We invited veterans and parents to come see our performance. In Reader’s Workshop this week, Miss Anna taught us a lesson on connections. In Writer’s Workshop we are planting our seed stories onto paper and working on fixing up our writing. Next week we will publish our personal narratives! In Math, we reviewed place value. We are learning a place value game that we will teach our online buddies in Mount Prospect. In cursive this week, we learned the letters i and t. In P.E. we had a free day. Today we are going to an assembly called The Power of One (about bullying). In Social Studies this week, we’ve been researching Washington D.C. and we started making a brochure to welcome the Obama family to their new home. Today is our first Fruity Friday! Mrs. Boryszewski was able to win a grant and get money for our school to give healthy snacks out! Every Friday, each class will get to try a new fresh fruit! Dominika is taking Speedy home this weekend. Check out pictures from our field trip below:

Our Ball Chairs Have Arrived

As you've read from our previous blog entries, our class posted a grant proposal on the Donor's Choose website, where people can donate money to school projects and help teachers fund projects for their classrooms & students. One of our projects was called "On the Ball...." and we were requesting 6 large exercise balls to use as chairs in the classroom. I wanted the 3rd graders in Room 203 to be "on the ball" in reading, math and writing, and what better way then by providing exercise ball seats! All teachers search for ways to promote learning and engagement in their classrooms. Creating a motivating, engaging, and creative learning environment is always on the top of my list!

The balls arrived on Monday, and with the help of an electric air pump, we inflated them all! They're orange (they perfectly match our Promethean Board) and the kids love them! Check them out:

A Peek at Our Week

On Monday this week, we all did a school vote for our country's next president! We all got our own ballots and voted in a voting booth for John McCain or Barack Obama. We even got an I VOTED sticker after! The winner of the Kennedy School Presidential Elections was Barack Obama! We didn't have school on Tuesday since it was Election Day. We all watched the elections at night to see that Barack Obama won with 364 electoral votes (he only needed 270 to win). Wednesday we learned about the different regions in our country and which states are in each region. We used candy to represent the different landforms in the United States! On Thursday in Reader's Workshop we read If I Were President and talked about all the different jobs a president has when in office. In Writer's Workshop we worked on planting our BEST seed story from our writer's workshop journsl on a piece of paper to grow and develop into a writing piece to publish! This week we read The Scrambled States of America and even watched the movie version! Today we chatted with our "online buddies" (the 3rd grade class in Mount Prospect) on gmail. We had music today, too. It was our last music class before our Veteran's Day show next Tuesday. Earlier this week, real veterans came to talk to our classroom. We got to ask them questions and learn all about what it was like to be a soldier in a war. We are very excited for them to come to our Veteran's Day show next week!! In computers this week, we started researching for our WELCOME TO WASHINGTON,D.C. brochures we will be making for the Obama family! Malia and Sasha, and Mr. and Mrs. Obama will probably want to learn about all the monuments and buildings they can see when they move to Washingotn, D.C., so we are going to make them a brochure and send them to the Obama's! Julia will be taking Speedy home this weekend. We received 4 new postcards for our postcard exchange project this week, Louisiana (2), New York (1), and Utah (1). Have a great weekend!!!!!!