6 Hours of Reading = a Free Ticket to Six Flags!

Read to Succeed is a free educational program sponsored by Six Flags to inspire kids in grades K through 6 to engage in recreational reading. Students who complete six hours of recreational, nonschool-related reading are eligible to earn a free admission ticket to a participating Six Flags theme park. Teachers whose classes participate and complete the program are also eligible to earn a free ticket. Schools must be within a 250-mile radius of a participating Six Flags theme park in order to participate.

My apologies for the late notice but I wanted to at least give you a chance to earn your free ticket! Click here for more details about this offer.

Lioness and Her Cubs

My dad sent me this video today and I couldn't resist sharing it with you. I was so surprised by the size of the lioness compared to the man (she's huge!) and loved hearing the cub "talk" to his dad at the end... what observations do you make when you watch it?

Wonderopolis

I wanted to share a really cool website with you...

National Center for Family Literacy launches new Wonderopolis™ site. Start exploring today!

Wonderopolis™ is for parents and children to nurture a sense of wonder and build a brighter world for children through the power of discovery, creativity, learning and imagination. Through the guidance of the National Center for Family Literacy and the support of Thinkfinity.org, Wonderopolis™ shows families, and reminds us all, that learning is fun. Whether it's a curious question or an everyday adventure, learning follows us wherever we go. Wonderopolis™ helps bring fun family-learning experiences to the dinner table, in the carpool line or at the park.

Each day, visit Wonderopolis™ for the Wonder of the Day® a simple activity for parents to share and explore the wonders of everyday life with children. Talk about what makes popcorn pop while preparing a snack for a movie. Go stargazing and chat about where shooting stars come from. Take a break from rereading the same story and ask a child to create a new one on the spot.

I have a dream too!

We have been talking a lot about heroes in the past couple of months. The Dr. King holiday this week gave us another opportunity to talk about how heroes can inspire us to be great. We watched a video version of the book Martin's Big Words and will be using an online template to create our own books.


Kids: When you are ready to print out your own Big Words book, click here to type it up. Remember that you will not be able to save it - work quickly!



Martin Luther King Jr. from Online Bucket on Vimeo.

Here are the historical photographs we looked at in class: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/mlk/photogallery/1956-62/thumbs.html

Vacation Fun!

Our Tuesday writing homework is to think about something fun/a special memory you have from your winter vacation and describe it in detail. Here's my assignment for you to read...

      There were a lot of special moments during my vacation but one of my favorite memories was watching my nephews wrestle during lunch one day. We had just ordered our food and we were relaxing in our booth, waiting for it to arrive. Sam started grabbing his older brother Jake around the neck and squeezing him and wrestling him down to the bench seat. He was making the funniest noises and angry faces. We couldn't stop laughing at how silly he was being. He would start to settle down and then suddenly start up all over again. Jake was such a good sport and didn't even mind being attacked. He was laughing about it too because it was so funny and unexpected. My sister and I snapped a bunch of pictures and I caught a little bit of the craziness on video with my phone. I had never seen him act like that before. He was a total wild man! It makes me smile even now just thinking about it all again...


Have fun writing about your memory and feel free to type it up and include a picture too!

Reading Dahlathon

One of my very favorite authors is Roald Dahl. I fell in love with his books when I was young and have been sharing him with my students since I started teaching. I'm not sure if this site is new but I stumbled across it for the first time today... http://www.roalddahlclub.com/

In September, in honor of Dahl's birthday, they began a reading challenge. Any child, living in the United States between the ages of 7 and 13 can earn The Official Dahlathalon Award for reading just three Roald Dahl books.

Whether or not your child chooses to participate, the website is great fun!

Letters to Lions

One of our third grade writing standards is letter writing.
Write personal and formal letters, thank-you notes, and invitations:
a. Show awareness of the knowledge and interests of the audience and establish a purpose and context.
b. Include the date, proper salutation, body, closing, and signature.

National Geographic Kids website offers a great opportunity to practice this form of writing while doing something good! From the site - "Lions are in danger of extinction across Africa. Filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert want you to help save lions! Write letters to lions and the Jouberts will deliver them to African leaders to let them know how important lions are to kids everywhere. And we may feature a few of them in a gallery on the National Geographic websites and in print!"

For more information about these beautiful animals, click here. Nat Geo Wild will be supporting National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative with Big Cat Week starting December 6th. Check it out and
cause an uproar!

Book Club Ordering - Online!

I will be sending home another book order tomorrow and thought it would make things easier if I included the link on our blog in case you'd like to order online. http://clubs.scholastic.com/parentordering/login.jsp For every order that is placed online, we will receive $3 to spend on books for the classroom! Our Class Activation Code is: DL6GB - you will need this when you place your order.

Here's a virtual tour of some of the books available in the Holiday Books brochure: 

BrainPOP

I wanted to share a really great website for kids that provides information and videos about all subjects. To access all of their content, you have to purchase a subscription but they have LOTS of free resources as well.

Here is a direct link to the free resources for students in grades K-3:
http://www.brainpopjr.com/free/

And another link that includes resources for older children, for ESL instruction and in Spanish:
http://www.brainpop.com/free_stuff/

Veterans Day

In honor of Veterans Day, we will be learning a little bit about Veterans and the reason this legal holiday was created.




A website created just for kids is available thanks to The Department of Veterans Affairs.

Please note that although we will not have school on Thursday, November 11, we will have school on Friday the 12th. If you are planning to take the day off for a long weekend with the family, please let me know ahead of time so that we can prepare an independent study contract.