End of the Year Celebration

All of the third grade classes celebrated their hard work this year by spending the day together at Russell Park in Atlantic Beach. We rotated among seven stations and had a blast playing crab soccer, soaking our classmates at the sponge toss, and participating in many fun challenges and relay races. Thanks to all of the parents who volunteered and came to visit!

Group picture!

Even Gators and Seminoles worked together!

Wait...no hands!

It's all about the face.

Wait, that didn't work so well...

A little better...

Now we're working smarter, not harder!

A little down time on the tires

The perfect treat for a hot day-Rita's Italian Ice!

Mall of America

Today, we stopped by a human-made landmark, Mall of America, while in Minnesota.

We tied in some math (mental, decomposing/composing numbers, algorithm) by figuring out how many restaurants and stores are in the St Johns Town Center (using a directory list to find the total, 156) and comparing it to how many are in Mall of America (520) to find the difference. Next week, we will use our time at the Mall of America to learn a little bit about economics (introduce income, budget, opportunity cost, competition, scarcity, just to name a few).

The Midwest: "Amish Country" and The Great Lakes

We started out our week in Ohio by reading another nonfiction book about the Erie Canal,

which lead us into studying

While in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, we met some Amish families and learned about their culture by reading

and

We will be comparing and contrasting our cultures to Amish culture later this week. Would you like to be Amish? Why or why not?

New York!

We arrived in New York today from Vermont! We visited New York City as we read

and discussed the natural and human-made landmarks. From NYC, we headed north/northwest for the Hudson River and Erie Canal via

According to our mental math skills, we have logged 1,256 miles on our trip through the Northeast U.S. How many miles have we driven since we left Jacksonville? (hint: look back for the blog post when we were leaving the Southeast last week!) How many states have we visited in these two regions? How many more do we have to go? On Monday, we will leave for the Midwest Region: Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), Nebraska (NE), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), South Dakota (SD), and Wisconsin (WI). Students will be tested on identifying the states in this region on Thursday, May 24.

Massachusetts!

On our road trip through the Northeast states, we found ourselves in Massachusetts today.

We visited Plymouth Rock and learned that due to a series of moves, it is about one-third of its original size (originally 10 tons/20,000 pounds). We also learned that the pilgrims didn't actually land on the rock, rather it is a symbol of our country's founding. Next, we read a story to learn about the Boston Tea Party.

We had fun with the repetitive dialogue of the king ("Tax the tea!"), colonists ("No!"), and sailors ("Like a giant teapot!"). :-) We also learned about whale watching in Provincetown, fishing boats in Gloucester, the Plimoth Plantation, The Salem Witch Museum, Paul Revere and the Old North Church, the Cape Cod Potato Chips Factory in Hyannis, and the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden in Springfield. I was even able to share some of my experiences traveling to Boston (we used mental math to find the difference between 2012 and 1996 when I was there). I leave you with my favorite part of Boston, the Commons, which are large, open, grassy areas scattered through the city.

And we're off again!

On Monday, we will leave Charleston, WV and the SE region on our "road trip" for Annapolis, Maryland and the NE region of the United States. So far, we've logged 3,044 miles! We have been keeping track of our mileage each day and using it to practice estimation and mental math strategies. Here are the states we will visit in the NE: Connecticut (CT) Delaware (DE) Maine (ME) Maryland (MD) Massachusetts (MA) New Hampshire (NH) New Jersey (NJ) New York (NY) Pennsylvania (PA) Rhode Island (RI) Vermont (VT) Please have your student practice identifying these states on a map. Your student needs to know either the correct abbreviation or the state's name for the test on Thursday, May 17. We would love to get our Alimacani families involved in our road trip! Do you have any family in this region? If so, where? Are you familiar with this region? What should we know about it (landforms, climate, natural resources, culture, etc) or visit? Feel free to post comments below! Also, if you have any pictures, you can e-mail them to me, and I will post them on our blog! :-)

Play Day!

Our exciting week continues! We spent 90 minutes rotating between PE skill stations this morning. Students practiced their throwing/catching skills with lacrosse equipment, frisbees, footballs, and tennis balls. They practiced soccer passing skills on the field, teamwork with the parachute, jump rope, and balance. Good thing today was "bring your teacher a flower day", so our room smells sweet and not like sweaty third graders! :-)

Thanks to the parents who joined us!

The rain stopped just in time for our relay races!