How _________ You Are

I

am no longer going to blog here for my class.

Though I had permissions, no parent complaints, exemplary work and the support of university classes, bloggers, educators I am now experiencing restrictions and those that use them to turn off the hundreds of thousands of hours I used here to celebrate learning.

Please join me in recognizing that

a)

b)

c)

d) none of the above

 

Door Decorating Red Ribbon Week 2012

Door Decorating Red Ribbon Week 2012, a set on Flickr.

How exciting for Red Ribbon Week our class pledged to remain drug free. AND we won the contest in the 3rd to 5th category.
Very exciting.

Foo Dog Drawings 2012

Foo Dog Drawings 2012, a set on Flickr.

Today our class worked on a drawing of a “Foo Dog” after finishing reading The Ballad of Mulan. It was very exciting to see how each student drew this image so well. We are writing Lost Diaries of Mulan’s adventures. Lots of good writing!
Enjoy.

Van Gogh Projects 2012

Van Gogh Projects 2012, a set on Flickr.

This is the lovely start to a new school year.
I’ve had computer woes, but have a new one and am ready to start sharing our classroom. Let’s start with our artist-Vincent Van Gogh!

Spring Flowers 2012

Spring Flowers 2012, a set on Flickr.

Beautiful job, ready for Open House, almost!

Puffin Portrait Art Gallery, finished Feb. 28, 2012

Puffin Portrait Art Gallery Feb. 2012, a set on Flickr.

Well the watercolor part of our puffin series was quite a learning adventure.
Sylvia guided us in using water to thin and lighten the color for our backgrounds, then we focused on painting our birds.
Each puffin was quite individual, even though we started with the same picture.

It was a great way to celebrate our story.

Puffin Watercolors, The Drawings

Puffin Watercolors, Feb. 2012, a set on Flickr.

We read a great non-fiction story, Night of The Pufflings. It told about these cute birds that come to shore in Iceland, dig burrows and lay one egg. After they hatch and grow a bit the pufflings use THE MOON to orient and return to the ocean. BUT there is problem in our story, a village is in the way and the lights at night disorient the pufflings. Many just land in the village. So the children gather the babies and launch them into the ocean. This saves the birds.

First we started by drawing from a PHOTOGRAPH our puffins.
The drawings in themselves took a great deal of OBSERVATIONAL skill. One thing we are developing is the idea of scale, proportion and observation.

The Gardens of Fantasy

The Gardens of Fantasy, a set on Flickr.

Although it took two more weeks than expected-due to my terrible bout with bronchial pneumonia-finally students built and wrote about imaginary fantasy gardens after reading Chris Van Allsberg’s “The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.” The story told of a dog, Fritz, that is rather a biter who runs from the care of a little boy Alan who is dog sitting for Miss Hester. Once inside the mysterious gardens of this odd Mr. Gasazi you are left to ponder if he was turned into a duck. Because the images rely on surreal topiary, it lent itself to an exploration of imaginary parks, ones the students tried to build in Playdough that we got. Lots of fun, very inspiring. Plus I think everyone enjoyed trying a hand at 3 dimensional model making.

Our Neighborhood Solar Systems

Off in Space

One of the delightful parts of third grade is the curriculum in science asks you to introduce the solar system.
So we had a guest speaker-my daughter.
Sylvia reinforced lessons we had started on the planets-with my usual repertoire of The Magic School Bus and every You Tube I could find-and there are wonderful ones.
It was fun to here the children ask her if SHE was Ms. Frizzle or a scientist and be able to say, “Yes.”

So the children cut out, colored, discussed and made these neighborhood solar systems, many displaying they do remember basics we’ve been learning, lots of the kids said spontaneously, “This is the best day ever,” or, “We love to learn like this,”
meaning making models, assembling, thinking where things belonged.
Monday we are making this,

I found this on-line, it’s genius and I don’t know who to credit.
I’m just struggling to get my girls to volunteer to help me make those wonderful Earth cupcakes.

a

I found several sites that look good for my students.

Windows To The Universe

Mrs. Bunsey’s Solar System Links

A Solar System Link’s to Pics Page

I just love this one….A Trip Through Our Solar System
An Internet Scavenger Hunt

And I liked Kid’s Astronomy.com

So these sites will be our links for next week. As we talk about the phases of the moon, and generally expand our awareness of our place in space.

Dogzilla-Nov 2011

Dogzilla-Nov 2011, a set on Flickr.

We just finished reading Dogzilla, a third grade story about this dog that terrorizes Mouseopolis.At the end of the story they suggested movie posters so we gave it a try.