Week 18

The weather is cold. Inside recess is called when it feels like it's 20 degrees or less, so please be sure your child is dressed appropriately for the weather.

We will have a presentation by the people from the Bean Museum on Wednesday.

Our class parties will be on Thursday.

The IXL skill for the week is G.3.

Christmas vacation begins this week! Thursday will be the last day of school. We will return on  Tuesday, January 3rd.

Please encourage your child to read throughout Christmas vacation.

Enjoy your break with your wonderful children!

Week 17

We have a lot of events coming up before Christmas vacation!

December 13 - Alice in Christmas Land assembly

December 13 - choir concert 6:15

December 15 - Alice in Christmas Land evening performance 6:30. $5 per person or    $20 per family

December 13-15 Box Top store

The IXL skill for the week is E.8

Spirit Day Friday:  Please encourage your student to wear their Dry Creek Owl shirts every Friday.  The class with the most participation will win prizes or treats each month.  

Week 16

Our IXL skill for the week is FF.6

Just another reminder again, the weather is getting colder. Please make sure your child has dressed appropriately for the weather. Unless it feels like 20 degrees or less or is storming heavily, recess will be outside. Please remind your child about the "no snowballs" rule. We want to keep our kids safe.

Week 15

Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break!

Our IXL skill for the week is E.7.

The weather is getting colder. Please make sure your child has dressed appropriately for the weather. Unless it feels like 20 degrees or less or is storming heavily, recess will be outside. Please remind your child about the "no snowballs" rule. We want to keep our kids safe.

This week we will be starting a grade level stamp card chart for good behavior during rotation classes. Students will be responsible for keeping track of their own stamp cards.


As parties approach, we want to remind parents of the district policy on treats. All treats that come to school must be purchased from a store. No homemade treats are allowed. We also have third-grade students with allergies to nuts and red dye. If you send treats, please be sure they don't contain these things.

Week 14

Thanksgiving break is this week. Tuesday is our last day. Enjoy your time with your kids!

The Turkey Trot is tomorrow. Have your kids dress for a fun run (walk, skip...)!

There is no IXL assignment this week! There is also no spelling test, but we have posted the words for next week, so kids can get ahead on studying if they want.

As parties approach, we want to remind parents of the district policy on treats. All treats that come to school must be purchased from a store. No homemade treats are allowed. We also have third-grade students with allergies to nuts and red dye. If you send treats, please be sure they don't contain these things.

Week 13

The IXL skill for the week is E.2.

Fridays are School Spirit Days! Please encourage your kids to wear blue, yellow, and/or owl.

Thanksgiving vacation will be next week. Our last day of school will be November 22. We'll be back on November 28.

Week 12

Thank you for all of those who participated in our Red Ribbon week. It was a very eventful and exciting week.

This week we just have a few reminders.  The IXL skill is E. 1 this week. Please make sure you are having your child sign in each week to do their math skill on this wonderful program.  Doing the IXL skill each week is part of your child's homework grade.

In addition to IXL, we want to give a reminder to everyone to have your student please turn in your blue reading itinerary sheets. We have had some classes where students are not turning these in.  The goal we would like to have set for each student is that they bring it in every week to two weeks.  We understand that is a less formal approach to reading at home, but we as a 3rd-grade team still want you to encourage your students to read as often as they can.  Reading at home is so important.

Week 11

This week is Red Ribbon week. Please have your kids wear the following:

Tuesday - pajamas and crazy hair

Wednesday - wear red

Thursday - dress like your dream job

Friday - wear anything owl

The IXL skill for the week is T.3.

Week 10

We're excited to have our Book Bazaar presentation this Thursday, from 11:00-11:45. Families are invited to tour our rooms full of wonderful presentations. The kids are excited about their work, so please join us if you can!

Picture retakes will also be on October 27. If your child missed picture day, or if you would like retakes done, Thursday is the day.

Our IXL skill for the week is T.1.

We'll have our class Halloween party Monday, after the school-wide costume parade. Please refer to Mr. Rencher's email regarding standards for costumes.

Week 9

Fall break is coming up! Students will have Thursday, Friday, and Monday off. We will NOT have a spelling test this week. Our IXL skill for the week is M.8. The Book Bazaar items that are due this week are October 17 (today) - opinion - main idea. Remember to look at the rubric for details on each item.

We had a fabulous time on our field trip today! We all loved watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Thank you, parents, for your support for helping us make this all possible with your donations.

Week 8

This week’s due dates for the Book Bazaar is October 11, main characters’ pictures and descriptions; and October 13, settings’ pictures and descriptions. Please refer to the rubric for requirement details. Students only need to bring the assignment that is being checked off that day, to school. The assignment can be brought in the folder, then kept at home, so it won’t be damaged or lost in transit.

The IXL assignment for the week is P.1. We will also be working on telling time. Please help your child practice telling time on an analog clock. If your child can already do this, please help him/her practice calculating elapsed time. We don’t want you to spend extra time on this. Just practice in natural situations. For example, “How much longer until bed time?”, or “You can play your video game for a half hour. If you start at 4:37, what time will you finish?”

Parent-teacher conferences will be held this Wednesday and Thursday. We look forward to meeting with you.

Our Field trip to see the play Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will be this upcoming Monday, October 17th.  We will be leaving in the morning and will be back to school before lunch. 

Fall Break is coming up soon. Our last day of school will be on October 19. Students will return on October 25.

Secret Words/ Code: Pickle Juice

Week 7

Today we did our Book Bazaar instruction presentation. The students know what is expected and how manageable the assignments and due dates are. They're excited about their projects! Be looking for their folders, which have information, due dates and the rubric for each item being graded.

The IXL skill for the week is D.7.

Our field trip to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will be on October 17.

Mrs. Hanson needs one more volunteer. All of the other classes are filled.

The weather is changing. We follow the district policy for inside days. Students will be outside before school and during recess unless the temperature feels like 20 degrees or less; or unless it is raining hard or lightning or the air quality is poor. Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately for the weather.

Week 6

DIBELS testing is tomorrow, September 27. Please make sure your child comes to school on time.

Parent-teacher conferences will be held on October 12 and 13. You will be able to sign up, beginning on Wednesday.

The field trip to the Scera Theater is on October 17. If you are going to be a chaperone, your background check must be completed before the field trip.

This week's IXL skill is D.1. Most students completed their IXL homework last week. Keep up the good work!

Our Book Bazaar assignments will be beginning soon. Please keep encouraging your kids to read their chapter book.

Week 5

TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER 20, IS PICTURE DAY!

If your child is in Burton's, Hanson's or Yerkes' class, IXL will begin this week. The assigned skill is C.9. Your child has his/her login and password.   Rasmussen's and Terry's  classes will start  IXL next week.  

We are ready to begin our Book Bazaar book report. Your child should be reading a chapter book that will be reported on. The report is broken up into extremely manageable parts, with due dates beginning on October 6. The entire project will be due October 27. If you haven't purchased a tri-fold, it would be a good idea to get that soon.

We will be going on a field trip, to the play Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, on October 17th. If you have not made a voluntary 3rd-grade donation ($15), and would like to, it will be helpful to have it before the field trip. 

If you would like to be a parent volunteer for our upcoming field trip you must have a background check. Please see the post from week 2 for more details on how to get your background check completed. 

If your child is in Yerkes' class, they have the option of creating an art project that shows their visualization of a character and/or setting from our "mystery book". This is a completely optional project. Students who choose to do this project may bring it to school next Monday, for our class presentation.

The secret code phrase: You are toast!

Week 4

Welcome to our fourth week of school! We've learned so many new things already!

We want to ask for your help in encouraging your kids to read, recording their reading and turning in their blue tracking sheets. Unfortunately, we have seen very few of these completed and returned. Our grade level challenge is for every child to read 40 books this year. At-home reading is essential to completing this challenge. Although in school reading doesn't count on the blue papers, it does count toward the 40 book challenge.

We have received the information we need for IXL. Be looking for an IXL assignment next week. Raz-kids will also be coming soon.

The secret code word is: commutative 

Week 3

We hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  There are just a few reminders for this week to remember.

  We want to encourage students to keep on reading and filling out their reading itineraries.  We want each student to write down each time they sit down to read, no matter how long they read for. Every minute they read counts!  We would like to see those wonderful blue-colored itinerary papers come in every week to two weeks as a general guideline.

    As the weather changes, we want to remind you that your student will go outside everyday unless it is raining or extremely cold temperatures. Please make sure we dress appropriately to go outside each day.

   Dry Creek Elementary is having a spirit night at Chick-fil-a. So come join us on Wednesday, September 7th from 5:00 to 8:00. We hope to see you there!

     The secret code word is: Twinkle

  IXL and Raz kids are still not up and ready yet. We will let you know as soon as we have more information about logins and passwords for each student.


 Thank you for all of your support and your donations to each of our classrooms, we appreciate it so very much.

When there is no school on Monday

It's Labor Day- NO SCHOOL

*Just a reminder, that when there is no school on Monday, please check the blog for updated announcements and assignments on the following Tuesday after 5:00.

Week 2

Owl News

• Please encourage your student to always have a book with them anywhere they go and to read in as many places as possible. We are trying to enjoy reading this year by not focusing on time but instead focusing on where we read great books! They will fill out their “Reading Itinerary” boxes at their own speed. One box is for each session read. They can get a new sheet from their teacher once their boxes are all filled in.

• IXL and Raz Kids are not yet available. We will send home login and passwords as soon as we have those available.

• There will not be any school on Monday, September 5th because of Labor Day.

• Just a reminder that if you would still like to make a voluntary donation and bring in school supplies, these are very helpful to fund our field trips and classroom projects.

•  Please remember that anyone who wants to volunteer who will have unsupervised access, (such as field trip supervision or volunteer tutoring outside the classroom) will now need to have a regional-level background check.  This is a more broad background check and fingerprinting process that needs to be completed at the Alpine School District office a minimum of 30 days prior to the event.  The cost is $55.00.

• The secret code word for this week is: FRAZZLE......The secret code word is to encourage parents and students to look on the blog and find the spelling words and find out the owl news for the week.  Each teacher in 3rd grade has a different way they are implementing how they reward students for telling their teacher the secret code word. 

Each student will be given a pretest in spelling each week.  Your student will be given a colored list, Blue, Green or Orange for the week. The color is based on the number of correct words they spelled on the pretest.  The spelling list can be found on the left side of the blog under the heading "Weekly Spelling lists".

Welcome to 3rd Grade!

We as a teaching staff want to welcome you all into the 3rd grade. It's going to be an amazing year full of fun and learning!

We are also very excited to start off the year using this new blog as a way to communicate to you all the happenings and homework this year.  This we hope will be an effective way to answer those weekly questions or concerns you may have throughout the year.   If you have further concerns please don't hesitate to e-mail or call your student's teacher at any time.

Please login weekly to find what our weekly curriculum focuses will be and any important information you will need to be aware of.    The blog will be updated each Monday by 5:00 p.m. to show the most update homework and curriculum lessons for the week.

As we begin this school year we have provided a donation/supply list  for each student entering 3rd grade. This list can be found below as well as on the school website and our school Facebook page.


*Please note that some teachers may have specific donation requests for their individual classroom that will be made available to you on back to school night.

3rd Grade Supply List This year we are requesting a voluntary donation of $15. It will help pay for field trips, art projects and other academic purposes.  If paying by check, please make your voluntary $15 donation check payable to Dry Creek Elementary. NOTICE: The items on this list will be used during the regular school day. They may be brought from home on a voluntary basis, otherwise, they will be furnished by the school.
Essential Items: It is helpful for every child to bring these supplies, and they will be used throughout the school year.	Wish List: These items will be used by everyone in the class. If you would like to donate items, that would be great, but you don’t have to bring everything on this list.
2 highlighters 2 or more skinny dry erase markers 2 or more normal dry erase markers 3 composition books Large pack of pencils (Ticonderoga are preferred) 1 inch binder with clear view cover 4 pack of glue sticks 2 boxes of crayons 2 or more black sharpies 5 2 pocket folder, no prongs Scissors Box of markers Tri-fold project board. (These don’t need to come to school until specified.)	Clorox wipes Hand Sanitizer Kleenex tissues Paper towels Sheet protectors Large bottle of hand soap Ziploc bags: snack, sandwich, quart or gallon size. Ream of paper