Junior Achievement Teaches 3A About Economics!

Last Wednesday, our school had several people (sponsored by Junior Achievement) come in to teach us about economics.  Our volunteer, Christi Stevens, works at a Huntington Bank.  She taught us about what city planners do.  We got to pick our own "business" to color and place on the map of our town--which we named "Boom Town." (We had just read "Boom Town" by Sonia Levitin.)

For our next activity, we pretended to go to a zoo.  Christi "gave" us a $10 gift card each to spend at the zoo so we had to decide what we could buy and still stay in budget--oh, and we couldn't forget about sales tax.

Then we learned how to write checks.  So Christi had us write checks to Mrs. Pfeiffer for "pretend" candy.  She said that she will deposit them in her "pretend" bank.  :)

For our last activity, we played a game called "That's LIFE!"  We had to deposit or withdraw money, depending on what the space or card said, and show our math on our check register.  It was A LOT of fun!  :)

Thank you, Christi and Junior Achievement!  We had SOOOOOO much fun !  :)

Halloween Parade and Party! :)

We had a lot of fun at our Halloween parade and party!  We also had a BEAUTIFUL day for our parade.  :)

We played lots of different games. One of the games was a sensory game.  We had to stick our hands in some boxes to feel "creepy things."

Then there was a "surprise" in the last box!  :)  It was Mrs. Reinhart's hand!  Hahahaha!!!!!

Another game was like "Ghostbusters."  We had to shoot "ghosts" with our Nerf guns.  "We Ain't Afraid of NO Ghosts!"

We also played several other games such as "Pass the Pumpkin" which was like "Hot Potato." However, if we got caught with the pumpkin, we got to punch a hole in a paper pumpkin on a posterboard and earn a reward. :)   And, of course, you couldn't call it a party without food!  Yummy! 

Thank you to Mrs. Wittwer, Mrs. Reinhart, and Mrs. Parker for planning/being in charge of the party!  We had so much fun!  :)  Happy Halloween!  :)

Practicing Problem-Solving Skills Using Halloween Logic Riddles

This week, we incorporated some Halloween-related activities into reviewing problem-solving skills. The students realized that if they cut out the characters on the bottom of the page and moved them around as they tried to figure out the riddle, it made the riddles a lot easier to solve than to just read them without the pictures.

"Roll and Write" a Halloween Story:)

This week, we started our Halloween story for our creative writing unit.  However, we did not get to pick some of the story elements...we had to "roll" them.  The green die told us our setting (where)--the time is automatically on Halloween night.  The pink die told us our antagonist ("bad guy").  The purple die told us our problem/conflict.  And, finally, the blue die told us our starter/hook.

Then we worked in groups of three and completed the following brainstorming sheet.

This week, we will be going through the entire Writing Process (prewrite, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) in order to have our stories the best they can possibly be so that you can read them during Parent-Teacher conferences next week.  We hope you like them...and that they don't scare you too much!  ;)