Conference Times

Conference Times

On February 7th Freedom Elementary will be holding parent/teacher conferences from 2:00-8:30pm. We will be using the same schedule as the fall; a note with your 15-minute time slot will be sent home in this week's Tuesday Folder (1-29-13). 

With the increased number of students, it makes it difficult to meet with all students and families in that limited time span. Therefore, I'd like to open my schedule again to try to find other dates and times that work for you. If you're able to switch your scheduled Thursday time with any of the ones listed in the calendar below I would be forever grateful! Please just send an email with an available time. 

Multiplication Video

Solving Multiplication Problems

Students in 3K having been busy studying multiplication in our current math unit. We built an understanding of this concept by finding things that come in groups (e.g. eyes, eggs, wheels on a car). Then we looked at different ways to find out how many things were in several groups. The four approaches outlined in the video below include: drawing a picture, using repeated addition, skip counting, and creating arrays.

K'Nex Tower

Students that earned their Friday Fun Time for good behavior this week took part in a K'nex Build-Off. Kids worked in groups of three to design and build the tallest, free-standing tower. The winning team's tower soared over 9 feet! This activity was a great way for students to work on problem solving, teamwork, and communication.

Our winning team standing next to their skyscraper!

Butterfly Project

After learning about animal food chains, food webs, and energy pyramids in science, 3K delved deeper to study the life cycles of butterflies and frogs. Below is a butterfly art project that used oil pastels and water colors.

Multiplication Unit

Multiplication in 3rd Grade

This week we kicked off our month-long study on multiplication. We'll spend several weeks understanding the concept of multiplication by drawing pictures, creating arrays, and using repeated addition. NOTE: Third graders are NOT expected to know and memorize every multiplication fact. However, students should have a solid foundation of some of the easier facts, such as multiples of 2, 4, 5, 10, and 11. 

Box Tops Challenge

Bandaids

Drumline Assembly

Sheltered Reality (SR), a national drum line, has been traveling the Midwest for 16 years giving empowering and uplifting performances to hundreds of thousands of people in numerous venues. Sheltered Reality has covered numerous topics throughout the years, but they stopped by Freedom Elementary to perform their anti-bullying program. Check out some of the fun below!

                    The Freedom students and drum line participate in one last dance number.

Ms. Stettnichs and Mr. Knips should start a band!


Another group of students and teachers showing off their percussion skills!

Food Chain Game

We kicked off our latest science unit on Food Chains with a fun (and tiring) game! To begin, our class was divided into three different animals groups: grasshoppers, lizards, and hawks. Students explored the food chain in this grassland habitat and then made arm bands to identify themselves.

The object of the game for each animal is to survive as many rounds as you can by gaining enough energy and not getting eaten (tagged). Grasshoppers gain energy by finding cubes on the ground that represent plants, lizards gather their energy by eating grasshoppers, and hawks need to hunt lizards to find energy. 

At the end of each timed round, animals that had not been eaten (tagged) needed to have a certain number of energy cubes to survive. Even though the hawks did not have any natural predators in this habitat, students quickly found out that they could not survive if there wasn't enough food to eat. 

Click above to view one round of Catch Me If You Can.