just got the academy m4a3e8 for christmas as was wondering if anyone knows if there are any conversion or sandbag armour for this kit out there anywhere hope everyone is having a merry christmas

Straight out of the box, the kit has most of the features typical of a tank in the Korean War in 1950, rather than World War Two, so sandbag armor wasn't as common (the kit's figures, on the other hand, are typical of mid World War Two, but almost certainly not Korea). The small box on the left hull side is a first aid kit, added postwar. The smaller box on the right rear is an infantry telephone box, again a postwar addition. The curved ridges added to the turret front and the edge of the mantlet are mounts for a canvas weather cover, again common postwar, but not common in World war Two. If you delete these, you could backdate the kit. The tracks are the double pin design, which was seen only rarely in the European campaign, but which became standard postwar. Still, they were used, so you don't actually have to replace them with the single pin T66 type.
As for sandbag armor, Eduard offers a set of photoetched brass parts to construct the sandbag cages used on the hull of the M4A3, but you would need to make your own bags out of epoxy putty.
Legend offers resin sandbag armor sets, one for just the hull, another for hull and turret, and one with an entire resin sandbagged turret included, which would allow you to backdate your kit to the early style with the large rotating cupola for the loader instead of the small hatch. These resin sets are intended for the Tamiya or Dragon kits, but it wouldn't be hard to adapt them to Academy's.
Trakz also offered a resin sandbag armor set , but I think it's out of production at the moment.
In my opinion, the sandbags in all of these sets look a bit large--most period photos show smaller bags that would be easier to manhandle, but larger bags weren't completely unknown.
Bear in mind that only a few units used such elaborate welded steel cages to hold sandbag armor, though many other units had slapdash heaps of sandbags on the front hull only, and you could scratchbuild these from epoxy putty. A wooden plank would be set across the transmission cover (it rested on a metal lip on the inner sides of the mudguards) and the bags would be set on that and layered up the glacis plate. Another plank or a wooden ammo box would provide a second shelf so the bags could be stacked around the hull machine gun position without blocking it.
Note: In Patton's Third Army, sandbag armor was forbidden, as it was deemed ineffective, and the extra weight wore out the tank's parts more quickly and increased fuel consumption.