November 27

GRAM Field Trip

Our field trip was AMAZING learning about David Wiesner’s work. I hope your child came home and told you all about it.  Did they share their wordless story with you?  Each student created their own wordless story and planned it out just like Mr. Wiesner would.

I am so very thankful for each one of you!  I absolutely love my job and being able to come to work with such amazing students.  You are all great parents and doing a great job raising your child!  I hope you all have a wonderful, long, and relaxing weekend.

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November 26

Twin Day

We had all new sets of twins in our class yesterday!  They were adorable and it made the day fun!!

I wonder what our next class reward will be?  Hmmmm, we will have to decide soon with how quickly they accumulate points.

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November 26

Early Release Service Project

Hello Parents!

Something that is near and dear to my heart is service work. I believe that our communities and society benefit when people of all generations work to help each other out.

This is the first big service project that I have done with a class.  Mrs. Deter’s class is doing this as well and I love the idea of serving and giving back.

Blankets for a local nursing home

On our last Early Release before Holiday Break, December 13, I would like to transform our classroom into a team of community helpers.

I would like to have students work in small groups to create no-sew tie fleece blankets and holiday cards to donate to the residents.

How can you help make this happen?

  • Donate Blanket Materials!
    • 5′ x 4.5′ cuts of fleece from any fabric store
    • Monetary donations that I will use to purchase fleece.  I have a Venmo account (@Karman-Houtstra) if that is easiest for you.  I will also take cash donations.
    • Invite friends and family to make monetary or 5′ x 4.5′ fleece donations
  • Donate Card Making Materials!
    • Fun cardstock
    • Stickers
    • Stamps/ink pads
  • Come distribute them with me!
    • The date of delivery is TBA.  I will let you know as soon as possible.
    • Bring your student and/or family along to hand out cards, blankets, hugs, and smiles to warm our community members’ holiday season!
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November 22

Updates from Room 201

It was so nice to see all of you at conferences this week and be able to talk about your child.  This class is really special to me and I am so thankful that I can be your child’s teacher.

TWIN DAY

During this week, we earned our class reward, which they chose as twin day.  On Monday, students can dress up as twins, triplets, or quadruplets, with other classmates. If they want to be themselves they can do that too!

FIELD TRIP

Our class field trip to the Grand Rapids Art Museum is on Tuesday.  We will leave right at 9:00 and be back to school 1:30.  Please remember to send a lunch with your child that day, unless you chose a sack lunch on the field trip permission form.

THANKSGIVING

We do not have school on Wednesday, Nov. 27.  I hope you enjoy all of the things you are thankful for over the long weekend.

ACADEMICS (I should probably talk about that too!)

Writing:  We just finished videoing our persuasive speeches.  Those should be on the blog next week.

Reading:  We are finishing a Mystery Unit and now noticing similarities between fiction and mystery genres.  There is always a problem and crime.  There are main characters and crime solvers.  We also need to pay attention to details to solve the problem or clues to solve the crime.  Over all, the students have loved this unit.

Math:  We started a unit on Measurement this week.  Telling time to the nearest five minutes and one minute (on an analog clock) is coming up quickly.  I know almost everything is digital now, but if you have an analog clock and could practice together, that would be helpful.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We have enjoyed learning about natural resources.  If we don’t take care of them, many problems will occur.  Today they brought home a sequence of events from a book we read.  Ask your child to tell you about it.

Have a wonderful weekend!

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November 20

Dictionaries

Every 3rd Grader student at Georgetown Elementary was the recipient of student dictionary sponsored by Grandville’s American Legion Auxiliary Unit 179.   Sheila Manning, President, managed a fund-raising project that provided all of our HPS third graders with a copy of  A STUDENT’s DICTIONARY.

The Auxiliary Unit 179 is dedicated to the education and literacy of our communities children and youth.  Our students benefitted from their generosity back in 2011 — and we are grateful to be on the receiving end of this important project once again.

Many thanks to Sheila Manning and her team (photo above) who distributed the dictionaries to our students this week.

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November 14

Book Club

We had our first book club on Monday with the book Friendship According to Humphrey!  Both students and parents/grandparents were involved in the discussion.  It was great to hear everyone’s favorite parts and their thoughts on the book.   After our conversation, students made a craft of Og the Frog!

I plan to announce our next book in mid-January!  Stay tuned!

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November 14

Liquid Volume Unit

Over the weekend, will you save materials that we could use to discuss liquid volume (pint, quart, 1/2 gallon, gallon)? For example, an empty quart/gallon milk jug.  Also liter or 2-liter bottles.

We will be using these on Tuesday!

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November 14

Winter Gear & Math Test

I forgot a couple of things in my update this week.  As we bring all of our winter gear to school, please make sure your child’s initials or names are written on the tags.  The black gloves and snow pants can all look the same!  Also, if you have extra Meijer plastic bags, we would love to reuse them for you.  These bags are helpful to put boots or snow pants in at the end of the day.  Wearing the full gear on the bus can be too hot, so I like to have bags for the students to use.

MATH TEST:  A math review sheet came home last night. Please go over it with your child, give him/her a few practice problems that are similar to the ones on the review.  This test is difficult.  As you will see from the review, there can be many steps to one problem.  We will review more in class today and the test will be on Friday.

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November 11

Updates from Room 201

Upcoming Dates

Early Release:  Nov. 15 and Dec. 13

Conferences:  Nov. 18 and 20

Field Trip to the GRAM: November 25

Holiday Program:  Dec. 12 6:30-8:30 (more details to follow)

Winter Wonderland

The school was filled with excitement of SNOW today!  Everyone was very excited to play and be outside.  Some students did not have boots and snow pants today.  I am sure they have out grown their pair from last year and you are feeling rushed to go get some.  (It’s happened to me before too!)  Please have them come with all of the necessary winter gear soon.  They want to play in the snow so badly and it’s difficult to watch who is out playing in tennis shoes and who has boots!!

PE Cares

The annual P.E. C.A.R.E.S food drive will be started on November 6.  We are asking for your help by bringing in non-perishable food items for Love Inc. in Hudsonville.  Food items to consider are canned vegetables and fruits, pasta, rice, baked beans, black beans, kidney beans, peanut butter, tuna fish, etc.
 (please no ramen noodles)
The food drive will continue until Nov. 21.  We will be keeping track of how many items each class brings in for the food drive.  The class with the most items at the end of the day on Nov. 21 will win a bowling trip to Hudsonville Lanes and a P.E. C.A.R.E.S t-shirt.
This is a great opportunity for our students to care for their community, thanks for sharing in this service project with us at Georgetown.
Mrs. Nienhuis and Mrs. VanKoevering
P.E. Blog  http://mvankoev.edublogs.org

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November 6

Updates in Room 201

This fall is blowing right on by. . . literally!  The wind, the days, the weeks, everything is moving so quickly.  This weekend I will be working on report cards, which seems so strange that conferences already here.  Even though is sneaks up on me, I always look forward to conferences with the parents.  I love sharing about students with their families and partnering together to help each student be the best they can be!

READING

We have become detectives and learned that anyone can be a suspect in our mystery books.  Students are paired up with a partner and discussing parts of their books and working to solve the crime before the author reveals who made the crime and how.

WRITING

We are writing persuasive speeches.  Students have been writing ideas about opinions they have of either something they want to see changed (reorganizing the class library) or recognizing something or someone that may be overlooked (Mr. Rob).  Yesterday, students picked their best opinion that they want to continue working on through the end.  Our focus is audience and writing in a way to convince our audience to think the way we do.

MATH

We are working on two-step word problems.  This is VERY difficult for students.  Each problem is set up differently and it’s hard to know what is the first step and which is the second.  We have spent several days on these problems, and now we need to move on to multiplying by multiples of 10 (40×10, 60×10).  We will revisit two-step word problems when we add and subtract three digit numbers later this winter.  This is an “I don’t understand this….YET” situation.  Usually after a little time and a little more growth as a learner, many more students understand these better later in the year.

Keep practicing math facts at home!!  Each Monday their previous multiplication test will come home with a note of which fact to practice next.  Please remind your child to practice a little each night!

FIELD TRIP

I have received many permission slips back already for the field trip to the GRAM.  On Friday morning, I will draw for the chaperones that can come along.  I wish all of you could go, however the Art Museum only allows a certain number due to space with our already large classes.

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