Here's to the New Year!

Hello All!  Welcome to a brand new year.  New Year's always brings the hope of new beginnings, new challenges and goals to be achieved.   The students are entering into the second half of the year and there is lots brain building still to come!  I hope everyone had an enjoyable break with tons of fun and time to recharge your body and soul.  I have had a marvelous break.  Little Cooper brought so much joy to the holiday, I hated to send my daughter and her family home.

As the second half of the year begins, a couple of reminders...

• Don't forget to log in your reading minutes and remember to fill out the Great America reading form too!
• You should be working on your Did You Know...?  project for the rainforest unit.  Everyone was to get me their choices by Friday before break.  Quite a few students did not return their forms. I have e-mailed the student assignments so far.  Please return the forms ASAP.
• All students have been assigned a rainforest animal to research.  Students brought their flash drives home to begin gathering information and saving pictures and information to use in the computer lab at school.  There are many rainforest websites I have included on the 3rd Grade blog and my personal blog to help find information.  Students will be creating a 5 slide PowerPoint on their animal.  They will have creative license to design it any way they like as long as the proper information is included.  Students will need to give a physical description, diet,   enemies and 4 interesting facts about the animal.  We will have 50 minutes to research in the computer lab this week and will begin creating the PowerPoint next week.  Remember to bring those flash drives back to school!
• There is no spelling test this week.  There will be a pretest on Friday.
• Here is the Current Events schedule for the first Tues. 1/8 when we get back.

Anchorperson	Tanishka	Ryed
Book Critic	Rohan	Donnie
Movie Critic	Kyla	Julia
Food Critic	Carter	Katie
Commercial	Alexis	William
Sports Reporter	Pragna	Kaleb

• In reading, we will be starting a unit on dogs!  Students should bring in a picture of their family dog, or a picture of a dog they love (a neighbor's, relatives, friends, etc.) or a picture of a dog he or she would like to have.  I will display them on the classroom door.
• Look for information to come home soon about various opportunities to help with our rainforest unit.  In particular, I will be looking for volunteers to make rainforest leaves and plants, donations of food for the rainforest party, parents to help in the classroom for the "rainforest in a bottle project"  and some volunteers to help with the rainforest party.  Third grade will be transformed into a rainforest just in time for Open House!

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves.  The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

~Edith Lovejoy Pierce~