Food Drive

Each picture represents two cans or boxes of food collected for each category.

We are collecting and sorting all of the food outside the third grade classrooms.

Outside every classroom we are keeping track of their food collection on a bar graph.

We are responsible for categorizing each donation with weekly totals.

This table helps us keep track of a running total for our class donations.

We compare the daily third grade collection totals on this bar graph that counts by tens.

The food drive is a fantastic opportunity to apply "real life" math problems.

3rd Grade Food Drive

Today we spent most of the morning getting ready for the annual third grade food drive.  Each group is responsible for presenting, collecting and graphing food donations from a specific classroom.  Our food drive will begin on Monday, November 29th and run through Friday, December 10th.  We worked extremely hard on writing a speech to present tomorrow, a graph to keep track of the food totals and a box for collecting.  We are collecting canned and and boxed food, so please don't send anything frozen or opened.  Thanks for your support. 

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We are ready to start helping and collecting!

Giving Thanks Luncheon

On Friday, November 19th we hosted a Giving Thanks Luncheon.  We invited friends and family to come and share lunch with us.  We had some really delicious beverages and food for our potluck.  We decided to make and share food that we were thankful for and might have for Thanksgiving.  We also made placemats that we shared.  They showed what we were thankful for in life.  First we thought about what we were thankful for.  We sketched it on water color paper and then painted it.  We wrote what we were thankful for on the placemat and in a story that we shared with the lunch group.  Before we performed our reading, we practiced in front of our classmates.  We had a chance to sit and have lunch with all kinds of new people in our classroom.  We had a great time and are very thankful for our fun luncheon.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Mrs. Payne's Football Team

At recess,some of  Mrs. Payne's class has been playing football.They go against Mrs. Laubscher's football team[you can see them in the other blog post].Mrs. Payne's Football team's name is dragons.
The people who play football are Grayson,Max,Sam.o,andDavid.

by John and Grayson

Food Web #3

The dandelion (Savanna) gave energy to the butterfly (Jailyn), the butterfly gave energy to the crab spider (David), the crab spider gave energy to the garden snake (Kees).  

Did you guess this was the MEADOW food web?

Food Web #2

The leaf (Liam) gave energy to the night monkey (Meagan), the night monkey gave energy to the snake (Ella), and the snake gave energy to the owl (Max).

Could you guess this was the JUNGLE food web?

Food Web #1

Plankton (Grayson & Sam) gives energy to wriggling worm (Brice), wriggling worm gives energy to the fish (Kirk).

Did you guess this was the OCEAN food web?

Dramatic Food Webs

Food Web

Food webs are pretty amazing. In our investigation of food webs we've realized that the environment around us is SO carefully balanced and any small change made by humans can alter that balance. In small groups we created a skit using only body motions, no words, to show a food web from a particular community. The communities were:

- ocean
- jungle
- forest
- swamp
- meadow

See if you can guess which is which! Also, try to figure out who is the PRODUCER in each food chain and who are the CONSUMERS. The energy is transferred from one organism to the next in the community's food web. The energy for the producer always comes from...you guessed it! The SUN.

A BIG Thanks

Today we received thank you notes from our college friends in Indiana.  Two weeks ago we Skyped with college students at Indiana University.  They are studying to be teachers and they invited us to teach them how we write poetry!  They really liked how we used so much description with Million Dollar Words!  They read our poems on the blog and they wrote to tell us about their favorite parts.  They all thought we did an AMAZING job.  We were so excited to get these thank you notes in the mail today.  

Stable Structures...or Not

Our class spent last week as architectural engineers. We sketched and built 3-D structures from 15 straws, 5 pipe cleaners, and 3 feet of tape. Our supplies were limited because in the real world engineers have a limited budget and they must know how to plan and build accurately (or else they might be out of a job!). 

Casey and John made their plan very detailed.

After drawing plans of what our 3-D structures would look like and how we would carefully use our allotted materials, we started building. Many groups tried to incorporate triangles into their designs but building with straws and pipe cleaners is more challenging than it looks! On Friday we were finally ready to test the strength of our structures with GRAM weights. Check out how they did when the weights came out:

Built by Jailyn and Brice
This 3-D trapezoid held a whopping 540 GRAMS!

Built by Ella S. and Savanna
This triangular prism held 140 grams.

Built by Ella D. and Grayson
This cube held 180 grams!

Built by Max and Liam
This cylinder held 220 grams.

Built by Ava and Sam
This "little guy" held 410 grams.

Wildlife Field Trip

Today we went to the Wildlife Center of Virginia where they care for sick and injured wild animals.  The intention is to always return the animals to their natural habitat, but if that is not possible, then they keep them as "teaching animals".  Today we met an opossum,  snake, turtle and many different birds.  We also walked on the nature trail to discuss habitats and the food chain.  It was a GREAT trip and the weather could not have been better!

A volunteer at the Wildlife Center explained about the veterinary hospital and what we would see on our visit.

Peg the opossum is a teaching animal because she is very used to humans and can't be released back  into the wild.

Peg has an eye problem, but she is still able to enjoy a banana!

We looked at the birds that they had and the volunteer even asked us for suggestions on names for a new bird!

This fuzzy bird named Edie is so used to humans that she greeted us at the front of the cage and knows how to call for food. 

Here we are looking at the hawks and eagles.  There was a red tailed hawk and a young bald eagle!

We looked at the owls and this is a great horned owl that only has one eye!

We enjoyed and saw a lot of birds that live at the Wildlife Center.

On the nature trail the volunteer told us about a lot of things that we might see and should look for.

On the nature trail we talked a lot about an animal's natural habitat and what they need to survive. 

Here we are looking for animal evidence of wildlife with tracks or scat. 

We looked under a log for natural homes for small animals or bugs.  We found a millipede and a centipede.  

We looked in a stream and our leader found an large crayfish that looked like a lobster.  We teased that this was just like "Mrs. Laubscher"!