Check out Year 3’s thoughtful and beautifully written ‘Rock Poems’.
We have rocks that remind of us outer space, deserts and oceans full of bubbles. We have rocks that tell us that they love fluffy things! We have rocks that make us feel happy on the inside and amazing on the outside. We even have rocks that feel smooth like ice-cream – yum!
Well done Year 3. I just loved listening to all of you read these uniquely precious poems to us all; they are truly FABULOUS! [Read more…]

Look at the wonderfully ‘funny face pulling’ that went on during our Science lesson on Teeth. Year 3 were checking to see how many incisors, canine, premolars and molar teeth they had. Many had lost some of their ‘primary teeth’ and were counting how many ‘adult teeth’ they already had. Year 3 are really growing up!

Later we got to observe carefully and draw our own set of teeth – pulling even more expressive faces. Can you identify whose teeth belong to who?

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Thank you to all the parents who came into class and joined in the Ancient Egyptian celebrations. The children’s home projects were amazing. We had stories; games; dress up; singing and dancing; numerous presentations; talking mummies; a hieroglyphic quiz; pyramids that sparkled and lit up and had incredibly delicate models inside; read and nut tasting, models of ancient Egyptian buildings, with additional models and facts about the River Nile; mummified dolls and people models that we could dress up.  What a lot creative ideas!

We even got a chance to share our D.T. project of the ‘resurrected mummies’ where we used our pneumatic knowledge to make the mummy wake up…ekkk scary!

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Year 3 have been super busy using different mediums to explore some of the historical elements of Ancient Egypt.

We used water colour pencils to draw and paint our 3D pyramids.

We used wax crayons to design and colour our sarcophagus and two other inner coffins –  ekk!

We used oil pastels to design and decorate our own beautiful ancient Egyptian head dresses.

And finally, we used pencil and coloured markers to decorate our own portraits masks. Can you guess who is who?

Check out the photos to see some of the wonderful pieces of art work created by all.

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Do you remember the rainy Thursday we had a few weeks ago? Well on that day, the Year 3 students put their rainy day ‘poet hats and shoes’ on and wrote some super gorgeous poems to celebrate. Our inspiration came not just from the looking and listening to the rain, but by also ‘feeling’ the rain. We had a great time splishing and splashing around in all the water that had accumulated in our playground – it was great fun and really inspired us.

We composed a class poem by using each person’s favourite line from their poem. We hope you enjoy it:

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Last week Year 3 questioned whether rocks can absorb water.  To test our predictions we used the pipettes to carefully place the drops of water onto each rock.

But how did we make this experiment ‘fair’? Well, we placed the same amount of drops onto each rock  – therefore the variable we kept the same was the drops of water, and the variable that we changed was the rock!

We closely observed what happened to the water. Did it sit on top of the rock, run off the rock or did the rock absorb the water? We found some interesting results, and amazingly many of our predictions were correct. Great observations Year 3 and such careful use of the pipettes – well done!

Just like a sponge, porous rocks have the ability to absorb water.  I wonder if they increase in weight and size as they take in water?  How could we measure this?  I also wonder whether they absorb other liquids – perhaps you can explore at home.

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There has been some interesting ‘I wonder’ and ‘I notice’ moments experienced during last week’s Numeracy lessons in Year 3. One of the tasks was to ‘estimate’ how many cubes or lollypop sticks were in a given pile. As the piles became bigger, we soon discovered how much easier it was to begin placing the objects into groups of either 2, 5 or 10, finally counting them using our times-tables knowledge – hurrah!  Our counts became much quicker and far more accurate; we certainly got better and better at both estimating and counting!

The class were also given the Cuisenaire Rods with some problem cards. The cards asked them to find out ‘how many different ways’ they could create the same length. They re-discovered that the numbers could be made using lots of different colour combinations – hence they could be made using different number combinations. After some discussion and sharing of findings, some of the children noticed that these patterns could also be related to the different ways of making even bigger numbers, especially when looking carefully at the value of each digit.

By the end of the week, Year 3 had become ‘estimation’ and ’equivalent’ experts! Good work, Year 3! [Read more…]

As part of our Social Studies topic this term we have been looking at the life and times of the Native Americans. A story that we really enjoyed listening to was a traditional tale that may have been retold around a tipee fire. The story is called ‘The Clever Coyote’.

Listen to how the talented Year 3 re-wrote the tale from story format to a playscript. They had so much fun using their voices (and some of their facial and hand expressions too) to assist in retelling the story, using their newly written scripts. Fabulous team work and such great expression. I hope you enjoy the story as much as we did.

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In Year 3 we have been realising not only the FUN, but also the importance of working together. Whether it is with one person, a group or the class. When set a task that involves working with others, we realised we had to think about a few things. For instance:

* To listen with open ears to the ideas and points of view of others.

* To share and participate – make sure we do our bit!

* To show respect to other people’s ideas, strengths and weaknesses – we can’t be good at everything!

* To recognise when things are going well or not so well –  do we need a new plan?

* To celebrate the successes of all members of the team.

* To be prepared and recognise that sometimes things don’t work out the first time, that’s ok, we can just try again and even try another way!

Take a look at some of the things we have achieved ‘together’ in Year 3. We used our ‘working together’ skills admirably and even managed to have a little bit of fun too…

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Below are just some of the amazing facts that Year 3 researched into and presented to the class. We learned so much, and had lots of fun finding out new things. How incredibly wonderful and marvelous the world around us is! Thank you Year 3 for sharing your findings with us.

Did you know…

One of the largest snowflakes ever recorded was 40cm long.?

A rose has between 20 – 40 petals, depending on the type of rose?

It takes a whole year for a palm tree to grow 30cm?

Volcano ash can travel as far as the length of Provo which is around 17 miles!

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“Well done”

“Good job”

“Do you think we could…”

“Shall we try again?”

“It looks amazing!”

“We’re not giving up!”

These were just some of the phrases that were shared during our ‘team building tipi’ session this week. Year 3 were given the challenge to build group tipis – very much related to our Native American study of the Sioux tribe this term – Two groups worked with their own ‘build your own tipi’ set, which came with a pack of instructions – that alone was a challenge! And one group were asked to build a tipi using our fabulous new ‘loose parts’ playground equipment.

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