Pysanky Eggs

Today the students read the story Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polloco. In this story, a group of children made traditional Pysanky eggs using melted wax and dye. The children were very excited to make their own, modified version, today.

Worms?

For our latest field trip today, the students came home with an unusual souvenir-worms.

On our trip to the botanical gardens today, the students learned about different types of soil and a little about worms. Our class left the trip with our very own "Vermiculture" bucket. Over the course of the next two months we will be saving some of our morning food scraps and putting it into a bucket that contains some soil and worms. As the worms eat our scraps, they will produce waste, called "worm castings," that is an excellent soil.

If we do our jobs right, when we visit Boerner Botanical Gardens again in June, we should have a bucket of dirt and twice as many worms as we do now.

Field Trip

Reminder-We have our next field trip to Boerner Botanical Gardens on Wednesday, March 27. We will be back in time for lunch, but please remember to dress for the weather.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Spring parent teacher conferences will be held on April 11. Several of you have already signed up for a time slot. If you haven't yet, you can sign up for a conference slot here.

Student Showcase

Yesterday evening was Kozy's annual Student Showcase. Thank you to all of the parents who stopped by to see the wonderful work your child does at school. For those of you unable to attend, please visit the student work section of our classroom website. Most of the projects your child does are posted in this section.

Week(s) in Review

In math we have left Multiplication for the time being. However, this does not mean that the children are done learning multiplication. While the students understand the process of multiplication, many students are still a ways away from having learned all of their facts. Please continue to work with your child nightly. Memorizing math facts makes math much easier in the future. 

Our current mathematics study is on graphing and determining different rates of change based on tables and graphs. You may have heard your child talking about the Rhomaarian children and their magic marbles. Here is the story behind it:

For the first thirty nights of every year, each child on Rhomaar is visited by a Magic Marble Messenger, who leaves that child the same number of Magic Marbles each night. The odd thing, though, is that the number of Magic Marbles received by one child each night can be different from the number of Magic Marbles received by another child each night. So different Rhomaarian children can get different numbers of Magic Marbles. The Magic Marbles can be used to buy toys, books, snacks, and other things children like. Also, the Magic Marbles are so valuable that many children do not use all of their magic marbles in any one year and may save some for next year. 

 During this unit, the students have been looking at various Rhomaarian children and exploring how the number of marbles change throughout the month and then develop rules to determine how many marbles each child would have on any given during that month. Students are also asked to predict which child would have the most at the end of the month based upon the number of marbles each starts with and the number

Spirit Week

The big news this week was Spirit Week. The children enjoyed each of the special dress up days and I was thrilled with the level of participation the students showed. This week was also our Money Madness week. All week we were collecting money to help fund all of the new technology we have at Kozy. You may not know this, but Kozy is one of two elementary schools in Cudahy to have four computers in each classroom and the only elementary school in Cudahy to have five iPads for each grade level. We are extremely grateful to our PTA for supporting our technology growth, but we still need money to pay for it all.

This week, our school brought in an amazing $1082.72!  Great Job Kozy!  Our classroom also did an outstanding job and raised $191.46! This was the second most in the entire school!  (I don't recall a time I have ever used so many exclamation points)

The highlight of Money Madness week is always "Stuck for a Buck." On Thursday, each child could purchase a piece of tape to stick Mrs. Berner to the wall. The kids loved it and brought in $79 on Thursday alone.

During the Stuck for a Buck assembly, several brave students entertained us in song; among them were Cheyenne, Alex, Isabella, and Bri. I was able to record Cheyenne and Alex, but the audio is very poor. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture Isabella and Bri at all-sorry. :(

As a surprise for all of the students, the Kozy teachers performed in a flash mom. The teachers' dance is below. If you want to see the kids' reactions, you can follow this link: http://switchcam.com/d/borzick/flashmob/

Where has the time gone?

I don't know what happened this month, but time has been flying by and I have not been posting to this blog. My apologies for falling behind. I'm going to try and catch you up on all of the happenings, so grab a beverage, get comfortable, because there are going to be several posts coming up.

Spirit Week

Get Ready....Next week is Spirit Week and Money Madness!

This year we continue to raise money for Kozy to continue to add technology to our school. Bring your nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars to help buy more computers and iPads.

This year we will again have Stuck for a Buck. On Thursday, bring in your dollars to buy a piece tape to stick MRS. BERNER to the wall!


Monday, 3/18--Crazy Hat & Hair Day.....bring your nickels.
Tuesday, 3/19--Class Color Day, our color is YELLOW.....bring your dimes
Wednesday, 3/20--Wack Wednesday, dress crazy with mismatch socks, shoes, and many collors....bring your quarters.
Thursday, 3/21--Pajama Day and STUCK FOR A BUCK!....Bring your dollars to buy tape.
Friday, 3/22--Wisconsin Sports Day....Bring Any Money


The classroom raising the most money, earns a pizza party!!

Science Test

As I posted yesterday, our next science test is Tuesday, March 12 (Monday if you are in Mrs. Lew's class). What I neglected to mention, or write in the note you received today, is that I again created a set of flash cards to help you study. 

Click here to see the set. For full information about the site, as well as how you can use your iPhone/iPad to study, please read the Novemeber 11 blog post.

I have also uploaded each of the PowerPoints I use to when teaching the lessons. You can find them here.

We will be taking the test on Chapter B2.

Science Test

Dear Parent or Guardian,

Your third grader will be taking his/her next science test next week. Mrs. Lew’s class will take it on Monday, March 11. Mr. Borzick’s class will take it Tuesday, March 12. The material covered on the test will be taken from Chapter 2 of the Physical Science Unit.  The chapter is titled “Forces Machines and Work’ and begins on page B34 and ends on B55.  

Your child will be taking home a green packet of worksheets that he or she can use to study. The material contained in the three lesson assessments and the graphic organizer is found on the test.

Some of the things you can study with your child are:
1) Chapter content (reread lessons, review lesson questions)
2) Worksheets and Graphic Organizers sent home today
3) Thorough understanding of the Vocabulary Words is very important.  Know more than just their definitions.
4) Understand how simple machines work and what they are.
5) Understand how a lever works and where a fulcrum is best placed.

This material has been covered in class, but students should plan on studying at least 40 minutes in order to do well on the test.  Please feel free to call with any questions or concerns.

Family Trees

Today most students finished the first portion of their work on family traditions. Using Google Drawings, students worked to create their family tree. Click on the slide show below to see larger pictures. You can also see the pictures on your child's website. You can access their website from the classroom site.

Simple Machine Videos

Earlier this week, students took pictures of simple machines throughout the school. Today, the same groups worked together to create videos that explained those simple machines. To see all of the videos, visit our student work page on our classroom website.

Story Problems

In our continuing study of multiplication and division, the students needed to write and illustrate a multiplication and division story problem. They did this individually using an app called Doodlebuddy. They then exchanged their iPads and used the app Doceri to solve the problem. Below the pictures are two samples of the students' work. They did a great job on this and worked really hard both on the math problem and as they learned these two new apps. Visit the student work section of our classroom website to see all the videos.