Good-Bye Mrs. Hunter

Mrs. Laubscher's class was sad to see our WONDERFUL student teacher, Mrs. Hunter leave.  She is going to make an outstanding teacher next year and she will be missed.  We hope that she enjoys the classroom library that we started for her with our favorite books and messages from students inside the front cover! 

Coliseum Sketching

Come by the third grade hall to see our NEW Coliseum sketches. Our next unit of study will be ancient Rome. Notice the three different columns, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, all influenced by ancient Greece.

Awesome Frost

Can you see the frost!?

We were curious about frost. Some of the questions we wondered were...

• What is frost?
• What is frost made out of?
• What creates frost?
• Is frost just frozen dew drops?
• What is frost caused by?

We had lots of questions! We hoped that our experiment would help us find the answers to at least some of our burning questions. On top of a sheet of wet paper, we placed a can filled two-thirds of the way with ice and the rest with salt. We tried to figure out which of our materials represented different weather conditions outside that help make frost. We realized that the wet paper was like the wet ground outside, or the water vapor in the air. The can filled with ice represented cold air outside. (The salt in the can made the ice colder.) When the water vapor in the air around the can touched the freezing cold can, it slowed down and turned to frost! The same thing happens outside when the air is colder and the dew droplets turn into ice on your windshield or bedroom window. 

Chain Reaction Contraptions...Build It...Test It...Revise It!

We decided that just learning the different types of Simple Machines was not enough. Actually building Simple Machines and seeing them in action is much more exciting! Better yet, why not put Simple Machines together to create a chain reaction contraption that gets a job done? It sounds a lot easier than it really is! We've been working hard for the past 2 weeks to create our contraptions using items you find around your house: paper towel tubes, fish sinkers, string, plastic spoons, corks, marbles, clothes pins, dominoes, toy cars, and yogurt cups. We had to meet 4 basic guidelines:


1. Your machine must begin and end with the pull of a string.


2. Your machine must have at least 5 Simple machines of 3 different types.


3. Your completed contraption should not be any taller than 1 1/2 feet.


4. The chain reaction must be repeatable and reasonably reliable.


Here's a look at our Week One progress...

A Day in an Ancient Athens Court

We researched the court system in Ancient Greece and found out some interesting facts. Did you know that only adult males were considered citizens in Ancient Greece? (Some of the girls in our class did not think this was a fair system!) We found out that citizens in Athens made decisions about the law and whether to find criminals guilty or innocent. After our research, we became Athenian citizens ourselves.


We read The Boy Who Cried Wolf and wrote persuasive speeches trying to prove whether the boy was guilty or innocent. Our speeches were so persuasive that Athenians were divided right down the middle! Half of Athens believed the boy should be found guilty and the other half believed he was totally innocent. The city was in an uproar! To appease both sides, we brainstormed a way to compromise and wrote speeches to persuade the Athenian Council. Here's what each team came up with...   

Bread Making

Bread Making at the Ancient Greek Agora

By: Abigail

First we moved our desks around into an agora.  Then we made our signs that told us what we were.  There were merchants, olive farmers, salt, barley, yeast and more.  Our parents came in to help us also.  Then we got to work.  We traded out ingredients.  After we did that we started stirring.  First it smelled pretty gross.  Then we poured the ingredients in one at a time.  When we got to the honey it was so tempting, but we knew we couldn't eat it.  After we got all of the ingredients in, we took our hands and had to smoosh it all together.  It felt gooey every time we touched it.  Also we got flour to help make it into a ball.  You heard lots of loud pounding.  After we got it into a ball we put it on the tray and it was all over our hands.  Finally, we finished and everyone went our for recess.  Later that afternoon we got to taste our bread.  It was warm and I could taste the salt, but I thought I would be able to taste more honey.  It reminded me of other bread that I had eaten before.  It was a lot of fun to make bread today. 

Bread Making at the Ancient Greek Agora

By:Jonathan

First we had gathered our supplies from the agora (trading market) and then we mixed them together.  It smelled like bread flavored oatmeal.  It felt like jello if you added enough water.  I loved that we were being helped by parents.  There is no way that only kids could pull that off.  The yeast made it go twice its size.  It should taste fantastic on Friday.  Our dough looked like a rock at first and then it looked like real dough.  We couldn't have done it without the bowls and spoons.  It felt almost like fake snow with a lot of water.  I loved the honey and the olive oil was a different kind than my mom uses.  Lastly we put the bread balls on a steel tray and then off to the oven.  Our ingredients were: water, flour (white and wheat), yeast, honey, olive oil, barley and salt.  I can't wait to try our bread.

Join a Book Club!

Have you ever been in a Book Club? Everyone in our class has joined a Book Club with other kids who were interested in reading a similar book. We meet 2 or 3 times a week to talk about our reading assignment from the day before. Our Book Clubs stay organized because each person has a job for every meeting - either Discussion Director, Summarizer, Passage Picker, or Illustrator. (We can tell you more about each job later.) Look below to see some of the best quality jobs done in each Book Club so far...

The Rats by Paul Zindel

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

Tangerine by Edward Bloor

The Witches by Roald Dahl

Peak by Roland Smith