Happy Anniversary, Mulberry Street!

On my drive to school this morning, I heard on the radio that it's the 75th anniversary of the first book ever written by Dr. Seuss. He named the book And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street because there was a street by that name in the town he grew up in. He liked the way the word Mulberry sounded! Do you have words like that, words that just sound good to you? I do - serendipity!

After Dr. Seuss wrote the story, he tried and tried but couldn't find any company that liked his book well enough to publish it. At times, Dr. Seuss became so frustrated, he almost destroyed his story and the illustrations! He was turned down 27 different times before he finally found a publisher! Twenty-seven times!

Dr. Seuss sure was persistent! What would his life have been like if he hadn't been? Would your life be different if he hadn't been so persistent?

Brain Quests!

You know Brain Quest ®, right? Check out the two new Brain Quest widgets posted on our blog! Look - scroll down a bit, over on the right under the Kids' Search Engines. See? There are two new Brain Quest challenge questions every day - one for grades 3 & 4, the other for grades 5 & 6. Can you try them both? Sure! Click below the questions to see if your answers are correct!

Dividing The Keyboard in Two

This month second graders practiced using two hands and two sides of the computer keyboard - left fingers for keys on the left side, right fingers for keys on the right. They drew winter pictures in TuxPaint and used their beginning word processing skills to make captions for their work.

Learning to Type

This month, third grade joins fourth and fifth in working with Type To Learn 4 during their ICT times. To practice at home, try the links posted here, or try one of these games -

Keyboarding games from the Learning Games for Kids website:
http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/keyboarding_games.html

Alpha Munchies
http://www.abcya.com/kids_typing_game.htm
Type the letters above the critters as they fall from the sky - to protect your character's lunch! Letters appear on screen as upper case but do not need to be typed that way. That's good!

Typer Shark

http://kids.aol.com/games/typer-shark/

Type the words and letters on the sharks before they can attack the diver. There are several levels to this fast-paced game. 

Typer Spider

http://funschool.kaboose.com/gamesFiles/flash/kaboose/spidertyper/spidertyper.swf

Type to help the spider escape the hungry chameleons. 

Remember to sit up straight and keep your fingers on the home row keys!

'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!