Free printable SSAT practice test for Grade 3

Sam found the mitten on the bus stop bench. It was small and red, with a white snowflake stitched on the back. It was clearly made for a little kid's hand.

"Someone's hand is cold right now," Sam said to his friend Nia.

"Just leave it," said Nia. "Whoever lost it will come back."

But the bus was coming, and the sky was turning gray. Sam tucked the mitten into his backpack. At school, he showed it to the office secretary, Mrs. Ortiz.

"Hmm," said Mrs. Ortiz. "No one has asked about a mitten today. But that snowflake looks handmade. Somebody worked hard on it."

Sam had an idea. He drew a picture of the mitten, wrote FOUND: ONE RED MITTEN underneath, and asked Mrs. Ortiz to tape it to the office window where every family could see it.

Three days passed. Sam checked the window every morning. On the fourth day, a woman came into the office holding the hand of a kindergartner. The little girl was wearing one red mitten with a white snowflake on it.

"My grandmother made these," the girl whispered when Mrs. Ortiz handed her the missing one. She pulled it on and wiggled her fingers.

Her mother turned to Sam. "Thank you. She's been sad all week."

On the bus that afternoon, Nia nudged him. "Okay," she said. "That was a good idea."

Today, a message can cross the country in less than a second. In 1860, it could take weeks. Letters traveled west by stagecoach or by ship, and people in California waited a long time for news from the rest of the country.

That year, a company started a new idea called the Pony Express. Instead of one slow coach, the mail would be carried by riders on fast horses, one after another, like runners in a relay race.

The route stretched about 1,900 miles, from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. Along the way were stations where fresh horses waited. A rider galloped from one station to the next, jumped onto a rested horse, and kept going. After many miles, he handed the mail pouch to a new rider. The mail never stopped moving.

Riders had to be light, brave, and tough. They crossed deserts, mountains, and rivers in heat, snow, and darkness. With all the riders and horses working together, the mail could cross the route in about ten days, far faster than before.

The Pony Express did not last long. In October 1861, a telegraph line was completed across the country. Messages could now be sent along wires in minutes, and the riders were no longer needed. The Pony Express ended after about a year and a half.

Even so, people still remember it. It showed how far people were willing to go, and how hard they would work, to stay connected.

A honeybee that finds a field full of flowers has a problem. The hive may be far away, and thousands of other bees need to know where the food is. Bees cannot talk, and they cannot draw a map. So how does one bee tell the others where to go?

The answer is a dance. When a worker bee returns to the hive, she moves across the honeycomb in a special pattern called the waggle dance. She walks forward in a straight line while shaking her body from side to side. Then she circles back and does it again, over and over.

Every part of the dance carries information. The direction of the straight walk tells the other bees which way to fly, compared with the position of the sun. If the bee walks straight up the honeycomb, the flowers are in the same direction as the sun. If she walks a little to the right, the flowers are a little to the right of the sun.

The length of the waggle tells how far away the flowers are. A short waggle means the food is close. A long waggle means the bees will need to fly a longer way.

Other worker bees crowd around the dancer and follow her movements. They also smell the flowers' scent on her body. Then they fly out of the hive, ready to find the field on their own.

Scientists who study bees were amazed when they first figured out this dance. It showed that even a tiny insect can share exact, useful information with the rest of its group.