Exploring Solids & Boxes

Dear Family,

For the next few weeks, we will be doing a mathematics unit called Exploring Solids and Boxes. The goal of this unit is for students to become comfortable with the characteristics of basic geometric shapes, such as pyramids, cubes and prisms.

Learning about three-dimensional (3-D) shapes is an often-overlooked part of mathematics. This is surprising because the ability to reason about 3-D shapes is a very practical mathematical skill. Jobs ranging from architecture to fashion design to constructoin work require that people know how to think about and manipulate shapes. Many jobs also require workers to read two-dimensional plans for geometric shapes, and to translate the plans into three dimensions. These are just the kinds of skills that your child will be working on.

In this unit, the class will be building common 2-D and 3-D shapes. Students will make open boxes out of paper and fill boxes with small cubes. This gives them a chance to develop their ideas about how much space is actually in a box (volume). As a final project, students design and build a city out of paper boxes and figure how much room is in their buildings.

For homework, your child might be asked to find objects that have the same shape as those we are studying in class. Your child may also be asked to draw paper patterns that fold to make different geometric shapes.

You can help your child by showing an interest in and talking about what the class is doing. Another way you can help throughout this unit, and throughout the year, is to encourage your child to work with building toys and materials that you have around the house. Elementary students are never too old to play with blocks- nor are their parents! This play serves an important learning need: It stimulates children to make observations and draw conclusions about properties of two and three dimensional objects and shapes.

Happy Earth Day!

We are celebrating Earth day today and everyday! Students learned about ways to save energy, water and to keep our environment clean. We also learned 3 important words: reduce, reuse and recycle. This week, students will be keeping track of good things they do for our planet. This includes:

• Helping to recycle paper and use both sides of it
• Turning off t.v. and other "electronics" when we aren't using them
• Turning off water when we brush our teeth
• Taking shorter showers
• Picking up litter
  

Students also helped to pick up garbage on the playground at school today. We are excited to "go green" in our classroom! Here are some websites with additional great information about Earth Day...

http://www.earthday.net/

http://www.epa.gov/earthday/

http://www.earthday.gov/kids.htm

PE Play Day

We had so much fun on Friday with Play Day! Here are the pictures to prove it! We're also proud to announce we won the Tug of War Champions for 3rd grade!

Science Fair Projects

Our PTA is having a Science Night on April 29, 2010. They would like NBE students to create Science Fair Projects to be displayed for this event. We would like our students to participate and think it would be fun to work on in class. The project will be for extra credit in Science.Students will be given an opportunity to brainstorm what topics they would like to research and we will help them to put together each element of the project. However, students can work additionally on the project at home or can create a different one at home if they wish. Students will need a tri-fold poster board no later than Friday, April 16th. You are also welcome to come in and help students create their display backboards. We will extend our Science period and work from 1:05-2:30 on April 19th to conclude our projects. We will have fun with this and look forward to your involvement!

Up & Down the Number Line

Dear Family,

Our class is starting a new math unit called Up and Down the Number Line. In this unit, your child will start to work with positive numbers (like +1, +2) and negative numbers (like -1, -2), We'll put together combinations of positive and negative numbers, which we'll call changes, to see what results we get. Most of teh work is done through games, some of which involve imaginary trips in an elevator, up and down a skyscraper.

For example, one challenging problem that your child might do is this:

I got on the elevator at some floor in my building. I moved up two floors, then got down three floors, and I ended up on the fifth floor. What floor did I start on?

It takes some thinking to solve this. We'll do many problems like this in class, and the children will invent some of their own problems about elevator trips. Sometimes your child will brign these games home to teach you. As you play together, talk with your child about his or her strategies for thinking about and keeping track of the changes. You and your child should feel free to invent your own problems as you play.

In about two weeks, the class will be making graphs of elevator trips. To prepare for this, they will be looking at graphs from newspapers and other sources that show things that change over time, such as temperatures, heights, or population. If you can, please help your child find one or two graphs to bring to school.

Using numbers to describe how something changes is a very important part of mathematics. Thinking about ups and downs helps children learn how to describe mathematical changes. In the future, they'll use these skills in both science and math as they describe and graph how things change.