'Tis the Season

This last week before our Christmas break, students have been busy writing labels, greetings, sentences, and paragraphs. Much of the work had to do with Christmas traditions and holiday greetings. Fourth and fifth graders drew (or stamped!) a picture in TuxPaint, took a screen shot of their artwork, and inserted it into a GoogleDoc, which they then shared electronically with a chosen member of the staff. Third and second graders constructed a short paragraph about a family tradition, then illustrated it using TuxPaint. Our youngest students, still learning about the painting program, drew a Christmas object, then used the Fill option to color it in. A quick label finished the project.

TuxPaint is a versatile, robust program which is free for most operating systems. To download it to your computer at home, click here. And don't forget to download the stamps!

2011 Ladybug Award Winner

And the winner is...

Memoirs of a Goldfish!

This book got 4,892 votes from kids in New Hampshire. Interrupting Chicken came in second with 4,880 votes. How many more votes did Goldfish get than Chicken?? Leave your answer in the comment section!

Thanksgiving Haiku

As we were reviewing some of the Ladybug Award books in anticipation of next week's big vote, Mrs. Jackson's class made a haiku much like those in the book Guyku - but their haiku was about Thanksgiving. And here it is!

turkey with stuffing

potatoes mashed with gravy 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ladybug Book #9: Interrupting Chicken

The author of Interrupting Chicken is David Ezra Stein. The little red chicken interrupts his Papa when he reads to him at bedtime. He promises he will not to do it again, but he does! The illustrator uses tea over the paint in the illustrations to make them look old, and it does! It is a very funny story! 

written by Miss Bocko's Class

Ladybug Book #7: Guyku

At school today, Mrs. Wilson's class was the first to hear this Ladybug Award nominee, Guyku by Bob Raczka and Peter Reynolds. Guyku is a collection of seasonal haiku poems written to appeal to boys (and girls too)! We learned that haikus are short, structured poems with a pattern: line 1 has 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables, and line 3 has five syllables. We counted syllables as we read some of the funny haikus in the book!

Suddenly the fire alarm rang! We filed out of the building and waited for the all-clear from Mrs. Cook. When we got back to ICT, we wrote this haiku about our experience!

Fire alarm beeps loud

Makes you jump and hurts your ears

We line up and leave!

Ladybug Book #6: Rubia and the Three Osos

We listened to this book. Miss Bocko's class thinks the story was special because it had Spanish words like osos (bears), Rubia (girl with blond hair), sillas (chairs), and las tres camas (three beds). Can you guess the name of the story in English? That's right! Golidlocks and the Three Bears!

But Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya is different from other Goldilocks stories we've heard. In this version, Rubia ate Bebé's sopa, not his porridge. After she ran away from the osos, Rubia did a good deed and made soup at home which she delivered to the bears to replace the soup she'd eaten. She glued the chair and she apologized to the family.

We noticed a Welcome mat in on one page said Bienvenido - and we even figured out what that meant!

All About Me

Third grade has been using Kidspiration to make a graphic about themselves. Kidspiration is an organizational software with many visual and writing features. Students learned three ways to find images to use with this software, and made choices based on their specialties, their likes, and their families. Captions were added, then reflections so the work can be saved to each digital portfolio as a snapshot representing third grade life.