A real, live....

BOOK CLUB MEETING! Listen in on Andy, Lainey, Ella, and Mallory as they meet to discuss their Book Club book, Spiderwick Chronicles Book One: The Field Guide.

The Coolest Salt, Egg Project Ever!!!!

Ingredients for salt  project:

We had fun dropping the egg in water and watching it bounce at the bottom of the glass.

 

What we did first was watch our awesome teacher Ms. Payne show us what to do. Then we were split up into groups of 4. We all got to do 1 or 2 parts. When the plain water was in, the egg went to the bottom. When the salt water was in it was at the top of the water. Try it at your house now!!

Makin' Mud Cloth Progress!

Here are a few sneak peaks of the Mud Cloth progress we made this week in art...

This is where we STARTED!

See those authentic West African patterns and colors...

Shopping for Salt Slabs

An Ancient Mali math challenge we solved this week...


You need to buy six salt slabs for your family. You arrive at the first salt mine to find that each slab of salt will cost you nine gold pieces. At the second salt mine a few miles away two slabs cost 19 gold pieces. Which is the better deal? Should you buy six salt slabs from the first mine or the second mine? 


Everyone had his or her own strategy for solving. No two strategies were exactly the same, but we found out that some were more efficient than others. 

Rhyane had an interesting strategy we'd never seen before...

Max used a key and skip-counting to figure out the prices.
He challenged himself to write a paragraph to explain
his process and which deal he thought was the best.

Henry explains his thinking

Everyone agreed Henry's strategy was neat, organized,
and easy to understand. You can see how he has the price
for each number of salt blocks shown...

Macy also used an efficient method with string
math to find both price totals

All the Hype for Skype

Our new friend and resident Mali expert, Mr. Bruce

Yesterday we Skyped with Will's uncle, Mr. Bruce. Mr. Bruce lived in Mali, Africa for a short time when he was assigned there for his job with the government. We had many questions about Mali for Mr. Bruce...questions about everything from the crops they grow in Mali to what the weather is like there. We even had a few questions that stumped Mr. Bruce! Although he didn't know the answers, he encouraged us to do some research to try and find the answers on our own. Here are a few new facts:

Andy - "We learned that a queen never ruled ancient Mali."

Kristina - "We learned that they grow more than one type of corn in Mali."

Lainey - "There are no more kings in Mali. Now they have presidents."

Ginger - "We found out that the coldest it really ever gets in Mali is 75 degrees. Most of the time it's over 95 degrees!"

Max - "Mangoes are a staple crop in Mali. They have lots of them!"

Miss Payne - "The gates of Timbuktu actually mark the start of the Sahara Desert."

Macy - "Their roads aren't as good as ours. It might take 10 hours to make a trip that should only take 2 hours."

We all listen to Mr. Bruce's Mali stories

Nick scribbles down answers to his questions

Thanks for sharing your Mali knowledge, Mr. Bruce!

Hot Off the Press!

Maybe you thought third graders at Stony Point Elementary had officially disappeared...we're sorry!

The weeks following our Winter Break have quickly gotten away from us (as you can tell) but we're still here, doing just as much thinking, laughing, and problem-solving as ever. In fact, we have quite a few surprises on the horizon. Tomorrow we're hosting - not one - but two special guests! Both special guests are experts on the country we've been studying...Mali, Africa. You won't believe some of the awesome facts we've learned about Mali already. We still have some unanswered questions, though, like:

• Did ancient Mali have queens?
• Why was the capital called Timbuktu?

We're hoping maybe our Mali experts will be able to shed some light on these tomorrow. Check back soon to see what we find out!

ALSO, coming up soon...pictures of our authentic Mali mud cloth progress. We've been working hard with Mary Lou to design and sketch patterns that will cover our third grade Mali mud cloth. Last week we just started sketching our designs onto fabric strips. Wait until you see them!

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Hot Off the Press today is our brand new Mali Multiplication Book. Inside you'll find challenging multiplication stories (all set in dry, dusty ancient Mali, of course!) to stretch your brain.

Here's a sneak peek of just one Mali Multiplication Story...can you solve it?

"Two men walked into the rainforest. Moments before the forest had been alive..."

"with the sounds of squawking birds and howling monkeys." Wouldn't this grabber lead make you want to keep reading? Lynne Cherry's lead sure made us want to keep reading her book The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest. After we read, we took a closer look at how Lynne Cherry's crafted - or built - her story. We wanted to know how she used language to draw us into the story so we chose our favorite sentences from the book, the sentences that really spoke to us as readers. Ella's thoughtful sentence choices impressed all of us. You can read them below. Also, check out the Million Dollar Word Bank she decided to create with words just from this story!

Ella's Great Kapok Tree
Million $$ Word Bank