Hard to believe it is Christmas time already, this year is flying by.  We have been very busy using ipads and skyping with other class around the world.  My class loves to skype and they are great at it.
 So I decided to share some of our skypes and the jobs of students during skypes.

Greeters: they make the initial contact 

 My goal again this year is to skype a class in all of the 50 states.  We will also make contact with classrooms in other countries.

During the month of Dec. we skyped with students in Germany

Skyping with students in Ireland

During our skypes students have jobs, this helps to insure that everyone is busy and involved.

Google maps

Everyone is busy, fact finders, taking notes, mapping on ipads, and mappers.

Skyping is fun for everyone.  We have skyped 23 times so far this year with many more being planned.  Stay tuned to see more of our class activities.

       Honoring our Grandparents and Veterans

Singing to our special guests!

On Friday April 19th we honored many special guests with music and treats.  We held our annual Grandparents Tea.  This is always a very memorable day for both the children and their special guests.  Our music teacher Mrs. Walker has spent a lot time teaching the students songs that have special meaning.  Some of the students also shared narratives at the microphone.

Dressed in our best.

 

 

Grandparents

Grandparents bestow upon their grandchildren

The strength and wisdom that time

And experience have given them

Grandchildren bless their Grandparents

With youthful vitality and innocence

That help them stay young at heart forever.

Together they create a chain of love

Linking the past with the future.

The chain may lengthen,

But it will never part.

Author Unknown

Then it was coffee time, punch for those who don't drink coffee.

The students and their guests then worked on a questionnaire.  Here is a sampling to the questions:

They asked about celebrating holidays and family traditions.  They talked about school when they were a child and what was different or the same.  They shared marvelous memories of their childhood. 

The most interesting conversation came with the discussion of Now and Then:

gum .05 then  over a dollar now

candy bar .10 then over a dollar now

car $5,000 then $35,000 now

gallon of milk .59 then  $3.55 now

loaf of bread .25 then 2.99 now

gallon of gas .75 then 3.55 now

Thanks to our special guests!!!

 

Meet the Author

Last year my class skyped with two fabulous authors Laural Snyder http://laurelsnyder.com/            and Katie Messner http://www.katemessner.com/

This year I wanted to continue meeting authors via skype.  I contacted Jody Feldman author of The Gollywhopper Games 

Again this year this was a great experience ( the school librarians even stopped by)

She told the students that she became interested in writing books as a volunteer in her daughter's school.  Both Laural Snyder and Jody Feldman told the students that it is very important to read and write.  It is also ok to stop on a story for awhile and then come back to it later.  They told the students to save their writings and draft books because some day they my go back to them for inspiration. They showed the students their studios and talked about their jobs as writers.

Students listening to Jody Feldman talk about being an author.

Thank you Jody

I am waiting for The Gollywhopper Games 2 and 3!

Engaging Students in Science

Last year about this time we started our science unit on the solar system, now this is not my favorite subject, (as teachers we all have units that we prefer over others).  So I turned to one of my favorite places for help http://pinterest.com/  yes I have become a Pinterest addict. Here is an activity that I found, it is a great hands on learning experience for my students to help engage them in science.

Phases of the Moon

Dawson and Dillon started by coloring a globe to represent the earth

Then came more coloring and planning as we added the sun

Then it was time for the cookies, with a few extra for eating of course!

We had been working on identifying the moons phases.

Then it was time to label the phases, not the easiest task.

So proud of our work and is that a cookie in your mouth?

Finished project!

                                  Holiday Greetings

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Today is a SNOW DAY!  With that said I figured it was time to finish Christmas cards, bake sugar cookies, scrapbook, and of course write a new blog post.

This week at school we were very busy finishing our unit on Europe.  One of the many highlights of this unit is to make gingerbread houses.  The making of gingerbread is very common in many European homes.  On Monday our class looked like a house making factory.

I have a feeling that there was a lot of tasting also!

"Lets see what else should I add?"

 We were all so proud of our finished projects.  It was hard not to snitch more of the candy during the clean up.

My students are very creative.

 This week in music we sang Christmas songs to Mrs. Brown's kindergarten class, Ho, Ho, Ho!

Who is Santa and his elf?

Boys chorus

Merry Christmas to our friends and families!

             Sounds of Christmas are in the air!
It's the month of December and no matter how much I tell myself to slow down and enjoy this time of the year, one thing after another seems to keep me busier then I want to be.

I have signed my class up for two different projects, a global classroom project called Christmas Around the World and a Christmas card exchange project.  I thought both of these sounded exciting especially since our current social studies unit is a study of Europe.

Christmas Around the World

Through this project students will learn about the Christmas traditions of others around the world.  Students are sharing there family traditions through skype, voicethread, and twitter.
They are sharing stories, videos, and photos.

I found out about the Holiday Card Exchange through a site called
http://www.projectsbyjen.com/calendar.htm  We were assigned 30 classrooms throughout the US and Canada, we will exchange holiday greeting cards with one another.  We will also be sending cards to the Ronald McDonald House in Rochester, MN.

The theme this year is snowglobes, thanks to Mrs. Friederich for making the patterns that we used for our cards. Our card shop has been very busy this week creating masterpieces.

We are very proud of our creations!

            We anxiously wait for our greeting cards to arrive!

Special delivery, our 2nd card of the week.

 

                              Where is Mrs. Friederich?

On Friday Mrs. Friederich wasn't in school.  Where was she, Mrs. Egesdal didn't say.  Then at about 2:15, when we were coming in from recess, our skype was ringing.  Mrs. Egesdal said, "Answer it." Guess who it was?

It was Mrs. Friederich!

 But where was she?  She asked us to get out our draft books and to take notes and try to guess her location.  Here were her clues:

1. I am not in Forest City, IA
2. We flew west
3. I am in a different time zone
4. It is lunchtime where I am (I am hungry)
5. Home of the Portland Trailblazers ( Noah knew it now, because he likes sports)

"That's right I am in Portland, Oregon"   We were very excited about this and had a lot of questions.

Mrs. Friederich and her tour guide (Mr. Friederich) took us on a picture walk of downtown Portland. This is what we saw:

 Then Mrs. Friederich told us that she had an assignment for us.  We were supposed to write a story about why we thought she was in Portland and not at school.  (What an assignment from Oregon?)
Here are some of our ideas:

1. Her daughter must go to school there.
2. She just wanted to get away
3. She is on vacation to study
4. She wanted to get away from Forest City for awhile
5. She went to a big city
6. They went to visit relatives
7. She went to see an old friend
8. She wanted to see another town 

We will have to wait until Monday to find out why she was in Portland instead of being at school.  Mrs. Friederich said it was time for her to eat lunch and that she would see us on Mon.  We will have lots to share.