The Life of a 3rd Grade Parent

My daughter is currently attending a public charter school, here is our daily struggles and obstacles we face. Along with all the proud mommy moments of her 3rd grade year!

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Report Cards....

will be sent home tomorrow. A few years a go I would have been up all night sick to my stomach. L was such a different child back then. But after an ADHD/ODD dx we have been able to get her on the right path to where she actually LIKES school!!!! She has come so far already this year, it amazes me! I know she is smart, but seriously I could never imagine she would be able to keep up. But she is proving me wrong and at progress report time she had As and Bs with a C in spelling. But I will take it since the grading system is crazy difficult here! 

A= 93-100

B= 92-85

C=84-75

I very excited to see her official grades. She works so hard every night and I just want to know it is paying off!!!! I will def update when we get her report card tomorrow!!!!

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Project update

I was not able to post an update on her project until tonight. Life has been crazy busy. So she has 5 mandatory landforms she has to do, and then she gets to pick 5 she wants to do to make the total 10 different landforms.  So the mandatory ones are :

plains, lake, mountain range, volcano, and river

The ones L chose were:

ocean, desert, marsh/wetlands, valley and cliff.

I think she did well, and may have taken the easy way out, but you know what that is okay! We have already come up with how we are going to create most of them! Mostly using colored play-doh, real sand and some painting. And she has already labeled if it is constructive or destructive! 

We are making some great progress. She does not have "spelling" homework tomorrow, although we study her words every night, so we are going to use some of that to start writing the rough draft of her report that has to go with her 3D project. We are actually looking forward to putting this together (hopefully this weekend)! Yay for trying to stay on top of this one! 

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Tuesday...One day closer to Friday!!!

I'm impressed with how quick L got her homework done tonight....done by 8PM! That is a record for us!!!! Tonight's homework consisted of:

Spelling/ELA: write a paragraph with at least 15 spelling of your spelling words. Be sure to use adjectives. 

Reading: 20 minutes of reading

Math: The distributive property (this is not your ordinary math sheet. I will be posting a pic of her math sheet later!)

Science/Social Studies: Nothing (although she does have a project due at the end of next week we are working on). 

After writing her story in record time (with minimal spelling errors), then she had to rewrite it due to how sloppy her writing was.  Still had it done before dinner! That is impressive.  Her math on the other hand was something they just started learning today! And let's just say it's insane for 3rd grade, or at least I think so. Thank goodness I was able to figure it out, however never burn your bridges with past teachers!!!! I sent a picture to her 1st grade teacher just to ensure I was doing it right! hahaha. Thankfully I was (I'm pretty dang good at math if I say so myself)!!!!! 

We didn't get to reading. She can do that in the morning. It was nice to see her actually get some time to play with M on the WiiU (which we just bought tonight). It was nice to see her smiling and chat with her about non school/homework related stuff.  I just hope this trend continues!!! 

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Social Studies project

Okay so the whole 3rd grade at L's school has been working on different landforms over the last several weeks, so her project is to create a 10 different landforms and it must be in 3D! We have to be creative which stinks, b/c I do not have a creative bone in my body.  And it had to be colorful, which I can do!  So tonight we are going to pick out our 10 different land forms, that way I have some time to do some research and see what I can do for each landmass. LOL. This is going to be interesting. I am not going to do all of it tho. I am going to have a list of 3 different ideas for each landform and she is going to pick the one she wants to do! Blah....this could get interesting. I will update you each time we do something and you can watch this project come together right before your eyes! 

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Monday's homework

Here is L's homework for tonight: 

Spelling/ELA: Use your spelling words in a complete sentences. Use adjectives. 

Reading Log: 20 minutes of reading

Math: it has nothing listed (however she did come home with a math sheet).

Science/ ELA/ Social Studies: Social Studies- work on bb projects! (I will update you on this in a later post!

Happy Monday to me.  

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Another week....another spelling test

Well it's Monday and another week of 3rd grade! 

Here are this weeks spelling words for L

thrive, knife, chime, prime, whine, spine, strive, stripe, stride, scribe, tribe, guide, twice, spite, crime, glide, shrub, strum, skull, pulse, lungs, muscle, ulna, femur, radius

After last week I'm not complaining this week! LOL. This should be a pretty easy week when it comes to spelling!!! But L has yet another project we have to work on, and it is much more in-depth. Here we go again. 

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

TGIF

Yay!!! We made it to Friday!!!!! Today is L's spelling test, I'm not confident she is going to do well. I obviously didn't tell her this, but she was having a hard time with cosmetologist, dermatologist, geologist, and journalist :( But we are going to work on them over the weekend! Today is also presentation day for her force of motion project! She has worked on the presentation for only a few minutes and has it down. She is so smart, she just has a rough time with spelling. Oh well, she is just like her mama!

Today is also a 1/2 day, which means we got to catch an extra 15 minutes of sleep b/c I didn't have to make her lunch today!!! Is that sad? I was excited I didn't have to make her lunch? 

Well until Monday!

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Finished Project.....

Homemade windchime! She is pretty proud of this and so am I. Her project was to create something that played into force of motion.  So the force is wind and the motion is the chiming! All the main parts are things you can find in your kitchen! I can't wait to see how her presentation goes tomorrow!!!! 

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Math DONE, on to....

her project. She is currently stringing bead to create a handle! I am so glad that math took her all of 10 minutes! LOL. This project should only take about 30 minutes (I hope then then we will have the rest of the night to study spelling words)!! 

I will post a picture of her final project and how we created it later tonight! 

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Thursday night homework!!! (10/16/14)

Okay so it's Thursday night and of course it's homework time!!! Tonights homework consist of: 

Spelling: Study for spelling test tomorrow

Reading: 20 minutes of reading

Math: understanding multiplying by 10s

Science: work on project due TOMORROW!!!

Seriously this is going to be an all night affair!!!!! But it's the last night of homework for the week and tomorrow is a half day!!! So I'm hoping the night goes smoothly and we get through it without a fight!!! Wish me luck!!

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Tonights homework (10/16/14)

It's a light night when it comes to homework!!! 

Spelling: study spelling words

Reading: read 20 minutes and document in reading log

Math: understanding multiplying by 10's 

Science: work on project

I will fill you in on her science project later! We are making a homemade wind-chime, it has to do something with force of motion! For having a Master's degree I tell you sometimes I feel pretty damn stupid.  

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

Spelling words for this week...October 13th

Here is this weeks spelling words that my 8 year old has to know before Friday's test! 

artist, finalist, violinist, tourist, dentist, florist, dermatologist, geologist, journalist, bicyclist, cartoonist, cosmetologist, waiter, hunter, painter, lawyer, peddler, employer, carpenter, projector, inventor, actor, sailor, visitor, raptor

Too much for a 3rd grader? Thoughts? 

[3rdgradeparent-blog]

First post

So this is my first post on this particular blog! So I'm going to dive right into things. I will keep my children's name and their schools secret due to their privacy and protection.

My daughter is the one in 3rd grade, she attends a public charter school that I have found to be very demanding on such young children.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing but there has to be a limit right? 

This is my daughter's first year at this school and it's much different than her last! The uniforms are VERY strict (which I like) and they challenge the kids to do their best (another positive). But where do you draw the line? My daughter learns 26 new spelling words a week...We just ended the 1st quarter of school and she already has more spelling words this year alone than she did in ALL of second grade!!! And they are not your average words (I will post her spelling words for this week soon).  

They say this is one of the best schools in the area, they do not accept IEPs or 504 plans due to their fast pace. But what about the trouble makers? Why should my child be subject to such behavior? Seriously...it's the same kids day in and day out getting in trouble, or suspended or the teacher taking away from the class to call their parents? How is this one of the better schools when most of the time my daughter is self learning? Which is very hard for an ADHD and ODD child to do!!! But she has managed, and we could not be more proud. I wish the school would have a policy for those trouble makers, it's a public school so they cannot kick them out, but why accept them back the following year? You do have to submit report cards and fill out an application, so why not tell the parents this behavior is not going to be tolerated or they will not be allowed back next year. 

Oh well, this blog will be 3rd grade through my eyes, not the eyes of my 8 year old daughter! I will hi light the proud moments and the struggles not only we have but we see out daughter go through.

Stay tuned.