Red Ribbon Week

Two weeks ago was red ribbon week! We had several theme days and this one was "Put a cap" on drugs! Here are some of the kiddos that participated in the day!

Spooky Bots 2010

Well we had a great day on Friday! We made Spooky bots out of recycled materials. All of the students brought in all kinds of recycled materials from home then used their creative minds to come up with some incredible designs for their robots! Mrs. Sosa and I had a great time seeing all of their creative juices flow! Every robot was so different and they all looked fantastic! Thank you to the mom's who came to help hot glue! Here are a few of the robots and students proud of their creations!

The First Few Weeks.....

We are off to a GREAT start for the 2010-2011 third grade year! We began our classroom economy on the second day of school and Mrs. Sosa, myself, and the kids are all loving it! Each child has a checkbook and can earn or lose money based off of their behaviors and work done in the classroom. Then, at the end of each week each child's checkbook is collected by their homeroom teacher and the students are all given personal checks. At the end of a two week period the children then get to take their checks to the bank to exchange for "cash." The students are then allowed to spend their cash or Star bucks (get it?) in for items at the store. If you ever have any items you would like to donate to the store we would happily accept them! :) Here are some pictures of the grand opening of the bank!

We have also done several fun activities in Math and Science. We did a sewer maggots lab, (ask your kids about it!) a pattern activity during Math where they created patterns out of beads, puff balls, pattern blocks and foam letters, and we did a gas lab. Here are some of the students showing off their lab safety skills before our lab.

Welcome to Third Grade!

Welcome to Third Grade! You are going to have a great year! My name is Mrs. Ford and I will be teaching with Mrs. Sosa. I will be teaching Math and Science which are the two subjects I absolutely love! This will be my second year teaching at CT and my 12th year to teach. It is hard to believe I have been teaching that long because every year is a new adventure and I enjoy what I do!

Zoe the class pet

There are a few things I should share about myself to let you get to know me better. I am married and have one daughter named Lillie who will be in first grade at CT. (I am sure you will be seeing her around.) I also have LOTS of pets and love animals. We have two classroom pets, 2 guinea pigs. (Charlie and Zoe) At home I have one dog named Maddie, a cat name Chloe and a turtle named Shelly. Lillie has two frogs in her room named Alli and Amanda. I also enjoy using the computer and creating things. I love to Scrapbook and go to Starbucks!

One of the main reasons I set up this blog was because I take a lot of pictures and I want your parents to get to see what we are doing in the classroom. I will post the pictures and activities on here and you or your parents can post comments if you would like.

I look forward to meeting you and getting to know you during this 2010-2011 school year!

Robots...

For Earth day students were asked to bring in recycled items not knowing what they were going to be used for. Once they arrived in class they were told they were going to be making Robots. They did a WONDERFUL job and here are some of the pictures!

Fractions Fractions.....

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. I have taken pictures of several events but wanted to post some of them then post more towards the end of the week. Last week in Math we were discussing fractions and since we are coming upon Valentine's day we did an activity that involved both! The students were asked to empty a box of conversation hearts and sort them by color. Then each student created a large heart on their paper and was given several minutes to come up with as many fractions as they could think of. We had two winners - Emma and Madeline who both came up with 33 different fractions with in about ten minutes! We discussed the fractions that they came up with which spurred on many more ideas. This was a great way for the students to understand that we can make fractions out of almost anything!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Third Grade edition of Ford Tough! I take a lot of pictures in the classroom and would really like a place to post them so that you, the parent and student, can see what we are doing every week! I also really enjoy blogging and have my own personal blog so I thought this would be fun. If you have an email account you, the parent or the student, can post comments as well. I can't guarantee when I will read them but I will do my best! One of my goals as a teacher is to have something we did in class become dinner conversation. Often times we sit down to dinner ask our children, "How was school today?" and their answer is, "Fine." Then we proceed to say, "Did you learn anything new?" and they say, "No." I want my students to come home and be excited about at least one thing they learned and then proceed to share that with their family. This is a way that conversation can begin!

Last week we took a lot of Benchmarks. We took Reading on Tuesday, Writing on Wednesday and Social Studies on Thursday! Your children did VERY well on the Reading and I was so proud of them! Way to go!

The girls in Mrs. Ford's Class

The silly boys in Mrs. Ford's Class.

A more serious picture of the boys in the class!

My class after they all found out they made an A on the Benchmark!

My class after taking the looong benchmark! LOL