Mardi Gras ~ Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday)

February 9th

Today all of the grade 3 classes celebrated Fat Tuesday!  What a fun day of activities, and perfect weather!  We started the day with pancakes and sausages, made Mardi Gras masks, heard a pancake story, calculated some pancake day real-life math, went ice skating and ended the day with a pancake relay!  Thank you to Mme Cann for all of the planning and to all of the parents and grandparents who came out to help.
Here are a few pictures of all of the fun!

Sound Experiment

February 3rd
We're having more fun experimenting with sound.  Today we were talking about how humans make sound.  We blew up a balloon, which once inflated acted as the lungs, and then we let the air pass through the top, which acted as the vocal cords vibrating.  This was a fun, and LOUD experiment!  Hopefully it will help the students remember the concepts!  Vibration = Sound!

Science Centers

February 5th

Today was sound centers day with all of the grade 3 classes.  The students spent the afternoon rotating through four hands-on sound centers.

Here are a few pictures of all of the fun learning!

Experiments included: Silly Salt Experiment,  Sound is Vibration! Can we see soundwaves?  Sound Vibrations will make the salt dance, Homemade drums, Straw flutes, Kazoos, Sound travels through many mediums.

Bubblegum reading

February 4th

It was a special day in our classroom today!  As a group, we have filled one whole bubblegum machine with reading gumballs!  Each gumball in this machine represents 2 hours of home reading by an individual student.  We have now taken all of the gumballs down.  The students traded them in for real gumballs, and we will start again!  I wonder if we can fill it one more time before June??

Way to go grade 3!

And special recognition to these two girls who had the highest number of bubblegums to "cash" in!

Groundhog Day

February 2nd

We celebrated Groundhog day with a school wide School Spirit Dress up day.  Students wore a toque or sunglasses based on their prediction of what they hoped the Groundhog would see. (Shadow or no shadow).  Would it be a sunny day or a cloudy day?

Boggle

February 7th

Last year I set up a Boggle board in the classroom with the intent that students who are early finishers would have an activity to turn to.  I quickly came to realize the amazing learning that was happening with this "game" and I made it a part of my "word word" in my language arts program this year. The Boggle board letters change each week. Part of the rules are that the letters of a word must appear in order and they must touch, either by a corner or a side.
All students play Boggle and are challenged to find at least 10 words.  I am constantly blown away by the words that the kids are finding in this game.  Some students are able to find a page full of words.  Students are finding more words that I even realized were there.  I am thrilled with the amount of learning that is happening with this simple game.  We keep track of our points each week and try to better our score!

Here are a couple of pictures of our recent game boards and the lists of words that the students came up with.

This one was a Star Wars theme, I had the letters:

J I D H
S E T R
N O O R
C L P E

Here is a picture of the complied list of words that the students found. As a group we compile words from individual student lists on to the chart paper.

This list is complied from the following letters with a Groundhog day theme.

The letters were:

GROU
NIRN
YAED
DGOH

Guitars ~ A Hearing and Sound Project

February 1st

Today we finished our guitars.  As part of the project students were expected to be able to demonstrate  how to change the pitch and volume  of their instrument.

Pitch is how HIGH or LOW a sound is.  Volume is how LOUD or QUIET a sound is. Students noticed that when they strum their guitar strings quickly the volume is loud, when they strum the strings slowly the volume is quiet.  When they tighten the strings the pitch is high and when they loosen the strings the pitch is low.

Here is a group picture of all of the guitars as well as a Google slides presentation of individual projects.

Enjoy!