Our third and fourth grade students and their parents gathered in their classrooms last Thursday for a night of problem-solving fun! The girls amazed their parents with their critical and creative thinking skills as they demonstrated and played some of the games purchased with auction money dedicated to our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) initiative.
Click on the links below for some fun activities: Brain Games Logic and Problem Solving websites and games
Right before the Presidents' Day break we had a wonderful writing consultant work with our students. Mr. Rick Shelton (author of Write Where You Are!) spent the day inspiring us all with his writing tips. It was amazing to watch each class write quality paragraphs in no time flat! After Mr. Shelton's visit all of our classes continued what he began by writing additional parts to his introductions. I had the privilege of working with second graders as they continued writing about their "dogs" and the things that they do. I so enjoyed the girls tales of their dogs (real and imagined) including a "houdini hound" and dogs that know their multiplication facts. We even learned a fun trick to use when writing creatively and that is "MSU" which means to "make something/stuff up" if you need to! Mr. Shelton encouraged us to write using lots of verbs and focusing on specific events or activities and expanding on them. Here are some links to websites with writing suggestions and story starters.
Link to Scholastic Writing Activities Writing and journal prompts
Some of the Fourth Grade students enjoyed sharing recipes and bites of their family favorites at our recent meeting. Jessica J. decorated a binder that we are going to put all of our original recipes in and the students will get copies of the recipes to keep. We discussed what we brought and why it was important to our families. Mrs. Moore brought a pie and Mrs. Landaiche brought cookies from books that contained the recipes for them. It was a fun (and delicious!) meeting!!
Click on the link below to see a few photos - Holiday Book Club
I have put together a slideshow of our LEAP Minute to Win it! sessions from beginning to end. In our sessions we enjoyed talking about how games have changed (or stayed the same) throughout history and we even played some that Mary Abbott brought to school from Colonial Williamsburg. We also played actual games from the Minute to Win it! TV game show (that we adapted) and then worked on creating our own games that we played during our final session. Along the way, we spent some time playing games on my Xbox and I recently purchased the Xbox kinect Minute to Win it game. I hope to meet with the students from my session during recess one day soon to play it:)) Thanks to all for such a fun time of learning and playing together!
P.S. - Don't forget to scroll down to an older post for links to websites on how to create your own game at home. Also, if you want to watch the video more than once, you need to hit the "refresh" button to see it.
Additional link to view the video - Minute to Win it video
Let the good times roll as they say in Louisiana (laissez les bons temps rouler)! I have been talking to several of our classes about the history and traditions behind the Mardi Gras celebrations of today. It is easy to forget the true spiritual origins of Mardi Gras when we see the celebrations and parades on TV. The "feast before the fast" ends tomorrow (Mardi Gras day) at midnight and we begin a time in the Christian calendar called Lent (which ends on Easter). Below I have listed some websites with activities and information about Mardi Gras. Enjoy!
I want to share a couple of websites that I ran across recently that I thought you would enjoy. I am adding these to the tabs at the top of my blog so that you can get to them easily another time.
Our third and fourth grade students and their parents gathered in their classrooms last Thursday for a night of problem-solving fun! The girls amazed their parents with their critical and creative thinking skills as they demonstrated and played some of the games purchased with auction money dedicated to our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) initiative.
Right before the Presidents' Day break we had a wonderful writing consultant work with our students. Mr. Rick Shelton (author of Write Where You Are!) spent the day inspiring us all with his writing tips. It was amazing to watch each class write quality paragraphs in no time flat! After Mr. Shelton's visit all of our classes continued what he began by writing additional parts to his introductions. I had the privilege of working with second graders as they continued writing about their "dogs" and the things that they do. I so enjoyed the girls tales of their dogs (real and imagined) including a "houdini hound" and dogs that know their multiplication facts. We even learned a fun trick to use when writing creatively and that is "MSU" which means to "make something/stuff up" if you need to! Mr. Shelton encouraged us to write using lots of verbs and focusing on specific events or activities and expanding on them. Here are some links to websites with writing suggestions and story starters.
