The powdered sugar was flying in Room 18 today. The 4th grade GIRLS' GROUP made puppy chow! Nine girls, 3 stations for cooking, 27 cups of Rice Chex, and plenty of chocolate and peanut butter adds up to a TON OF FUN!!
Halloween was a great day to write a spooky story and then build a ghost to go along with our story. Lego bricks and great imaginations made for a fun writing assignment. Well done, writers! Great job, builders!
Our popular Lego Lunch begins tomorrow! Third grade boys who signed up for this group will meet on Tuesdays. Thursday will the be day for our 4th graders. We are so grateful for a grant we received from the Spring Lake Schools Foundation. We were granted funds from the Foundation to implement a "Legos and Literacy" approach in Room 18. We will use Legos to complement our writing activities in Room 18. We were also able to purchase Lego Books to help with our reading assignments. We will also use our new Lego sets during our Lego Lunches! Thanks, Spring Lake Schools Foundation! I guarantee that friendships will be developed and we'll be excited about building and writing using our new Lego sets.
The wedding was lovely! It was a busy weekend around our house. Everyone was home and we all enjoyed the wonderful celebration. I put a few pictures in a slideshow - the rest of wedding photographer pictures will be here soon. We are excited to add Justin to our family! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at Holmes tomorrow!! It's going to be a year filled with learning, laughing, and growing. See you all on Tuesday!
We are almost ready to start another new school year! Room 18 has had a bit of a renovation this past summer. Our room is a little larger this year because they removed a wall between Room 18 and a storage closet. Lucky us - we get more room!! This will make it easier to have a number of small groups in our room without it being too crowded or too loud. I'm also excited to to have some more technology in Room 18. It sure is fun to practice some of our math and reading skills on an iPad - there are SO many great apps that will help us learn in new and exciting ways. We have a family wedding at our house this weekend. It's going to be loads of fun - we just hope that Hurricane Isaac steers clear until at least Sunday!! We are watching the weather reports every day!! I'll be sure to post some pictures. Enjoy the fantastic weather the next few days.....maybe a visit to the beach, Imagination Station, a bike ride around Spring Lake.... If you're looking for one more fun family outing, I would suggest Boulder Ridge Animal Park in Lowell/Alto. Google it and see what you think - our grandkids loved it and so did we!
Lego Lunch guys continue to amaze the teachers with their building skills. The guys are building sets that having moving parts that are powered by batteries - very impressive!
We made Laker Blankets before we left for Christmas break. Our hope was that the kids would take them home and cuddle with their new blankets and read a great book. It took loads of perseverance to complete our blankets - lots of patience paid off in the end. We enjoyed the process and couldn't wait until we could cuddle up at home over break and start to READ!!
It has been a busy time in Room 18 since the start of the New Year. We have had a big push in math in the area of multiplication. Third graders are figuring out that multiplication is really just skip counting and are working hard at becoming masters of multiplication. It's also impressive that they are realizing that multiplication and division go together and are just the opposite of each other. How cool is that?!?! The fourth graders are really strutting their brain power with multi-digit multiplication. Ask to see the multiplication dance sometime - it helps us remember the steps to multiplication. We have also been timing ourselves to see how quickly we can go through our multiplication facts - always an exciting time and guaranteed to bring out the giggles!
We have been busy, busy in Room 18. Math, reading, and writing are keeping us on our toes. In math we're learning/reviewing money and making change in 3rd grade, and we're learning even more geometric terms in 4th grade math. Our writing targets have included writing from a different perspective and remembering all the key attributes of being a great writer: stretching our sentences, forming paragraphs, indenting, and checking our spelling. Our readers in Room 18 are focusing on comprehending what we are reading. We know that good readers ask questions while they're reading - sometimes we even get off track with so many good questions. We have some serious "thinkers" in our class!
We wrapped up our first session of Girls' Group. We've had so much fun that we all just wanted to keep on meeting every week for the rest of the year. Parent permission slips will go home after the first of year for those who might be interested in being in our next session.
A few of my students are in the Honors Choir and there was a brief concert on Friday afternoon. Their beautiful singing has put me in the holiday spirit! We put our Christmas tree up this weekend with a little help from our grandchildren. There were only a couple broken ornaments but there was lots of joy - well worth it! Our college kids will start to come home this week and and out-of-town grown kids will be home during the holidays as well....should be fun!