Spring Party

Dear Parents,

We are looking forward to our Spring Party on Wednesday, March 31st. In Science, we have been studying the Solar System. Students have put together a puppet show teaching space facts that they would like to share with you on this day. We will also be enjoying a variety of fun activities and would love you to come join us!

Here is our schedule for the Wednesday, March 31st:

11:00-11:30 Solar System Puppet Show
11:30-12:00 Pizza Lunch
12:00-1:00 Plant Flowers/ Dye Eggs
1:00-1:30 Decorate Easter Beach Buckets (Parents hide eggs)
1:30-2:00 Easter Egg Hunt in the Courtyard

Thank You So Much!
Miss Fisher & Mrs.McCaffrey

We Survived FCAT!

We had a very successful week of FCAT Testing. We are also proud to announce that everyone was present each day of testing and we had no make-up sessions! The FCAT Parent Network was eliminated from the K-12 assessment program due to budget reductions. Individual Score Reports of students’ FCAT results will continue to be mailed to school districts as soon as they are available. We will let you know as soon as we find out!

Thank you to all of our families who donated wonderful treats for snacks and breakfasts each day of testing. Thank you also to Mrs. Kennon & Mrs. Brennan's kindergarten class for sending in special goodies to our classroom! They "adopted" our class during FCAT week and came in each day to sing, dance and cheer the third graders on!

"From Paces to Feet"

Dear Family,

Over the next several weeks, our class will be working on measurement in a unit called From Paces to Feet. We'll start out measuring distances with "giant steps" and "baby steps." Later on, your child will be pacing off distances in the classroom and at home. After making these informal kinds of measurements, we will start using rulers, yardsticks, and meter sticks. We'll be measuring things like people's feet, their paces and their heights.

The more experience with measurement that children get at school and at home, the better. Encourage your child to estimate and measure distances. Typical questions that might come up at home include these:

How far is is across our kitchen table- and can we really reach that far?

How many children can sit comfotably on our couch? How many adults?
Will that extra bookcase really fit in the kids' bedroom?

These are good questions, and they're also very practical ones! Measurement questions come up a lot in our home lieves, and it's exciting for childrent o be involved with these real-world issues.

Here's how you can help during this unit:

* Listen to your child's strategies for measuring.
* Involve your child in your own measurement activities-hobbies like sewing or carpentry are natural for this.

* Work together on the measurement activities your child brings home.

Don't worry if your child doesn't use a ruler accurately yet- it's a skill that will develop over time, with more opportunities to measure. Happy measuring!!

Field Trip

Just a reminder, next Friday, January 15th, we will be taking our field trip to the Florida Theatre to see the performance, Judy Blume's "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing."

Landmarks in the Hundreds

Dear Family,

In class we have been working on a new unit called Landmarks in the Hundreds. This unit will help your child learn about important numbers like 100 and 1000, that we use to find our way around the number system.

First your child will be working with 100- an especially important landmark. Then we'll work with multiples of 100, 200, 300, 400, and so on up to 1000. We'll be doing "skip-counting"- that's counting by 2's, or 5's, or 10's, or any other number. The children will work in class doing problems like this one:

If you count by 2's (2,4,6,8,10,12,14...) you eventually land on 100. What other numbers can you count by that will land you exactly on 100? What numbers don't work? How many 2's did you count to get to 100?

Children have very interesting ways to figure out these problems. You can help by asking your child to tell you how he or she got an answer. There are many ways of doing these problems and no single "right" way. What's important for your child to know is how his or her own way works. This is all part of developing good common sense about numbers.

We'll also be doing estimation. I may ask your child to find groups of things around the house that number about 100, about 200, about 300, and so forth. You can help your child's search. Talk about the number of things you both are finding, for example:

What about the nuts in this jar? Do you think that would be close to 100? What about the squares in the ceiling?

Finally, anytime that you yourself need to estimate or deal with large numbers, please involve your child. Whether you're buying food, or deciding how many tiles to buy to patch the floor, your child probably has some good ideas about how to go about it!