The Book Fair Is Coming!

Our Spring Book Fair will be arriving at our school very soon! It will be set up in the Multipurpose Room from May 9th to May 11th. On that first day, the Book Fair will be open after school and again for the PTO "Breakfast for Dinner" event in the evening. Thursday and Friday there will also be time to buy books. 


I'm saving the best news for last: this is a Buy-One-Get-One-Free Book Fair. Buy two items, pay for the most expensive one and get the other for free! Think of all the books you could buy to read this summer!


Here's the link to the Official Book Fair homepage: http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/homepage/newhampton

Castle in the Attic - The End!

How did you like the end of the book? I almost cheered out loud when Calendar turned Alastor into lead! I was so happy I could make a movie in my mind and see "the twisted, gray form of the wizard" and then watch him - poof!!! - disappear! Remember when William found the lead wizard in  Mrs. Phillip's bedroom - and William reached out to touch him? That was SO close!!

NHCS's own Silver Knight!

What did you think about Mrs. Phillip's plan for the lead wizard and the token? Why was she planning that - and was it a good idea? What would you have done with these items - and why? 

I am sorry I missed the Silver Knight at NHCS, and the gymnast, and the jousting. It looks like you had great fun after we all finished reading the book!

If you ever want to read parts of it again, we have a copy of The Castle in the Attic in the library. Also, we have the next book, a sequel, called The Battle for the Castle. In it, William uses the token to make himself tiny again. I wonder how he plans on changing back! And, if Alastor is turned to lead and is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, who is William battling now??

Just read the book and find out!!

Castle in the Attic: The Wizard's Castle!

In this week's reading, William finally arrives at the castle of the wizard, Alastor, which is guarded by the dragon that was mentioned in the last chapter. The author did such a wonderful job of letting us know how terrified William was to confront the dragon! The part where he was approaching the dragon while playing his recorder was so scary and the images he saw were awful! But after William defeated the dragon, I was relieved and surprised at the way the beast changed so quickly. So far, this has been my favorite part in the book because, in my mind, I could vividly see and hear what was happening in the story, thanks to the great word choice and sentence style of the author.

Sometimes when I read, I find new words - and I must find out what they mean! This week, I had to look in the dictionary to find out what a windlass is. Chapter 14 starts, "William heard the crank of the windlass as the portcullis was raised." The portcullis is that iron gate at the castle door. In your mind, can you see the windlass being turned over and over to wind up the rope that makes the gate go up? Where else would you see a windlass? Leave me an answer in the comment section.

The wizard's castle sounds really creepy with all those lead statues standing around. What do you think of Alastor? I hope William figures out a way to defeat him so he can get out of there and go home!

It's Magic!

Recently, kindergartners have been practicing "coloring inside the lines" using the Magic-Fill tools in TuxPaint. It's sure easier than trying to color back and forth, even with a digital brush! Here are a few of their spring flowers!

Searches

This is the time of year when most grades work on finding factual information from websites. Younger children use online directories like Enchanted Learning or Fact Monster. Older students learn to form simple questions about their inquiries, and to then pinpoint the important terms to use as keywords in their searches. We talk a lot about Google as the search engine of choice for many adults (myself included!) and why it's not a viable option for students. In class we searched for the term kites; using a Google search, we netted about 26,000,000 hits! How's a student to find relevant and readable information with overwhelming results like that?

There are search engines built specifically for kids that index only websites with content suitable for student use. These are the search tools we want children to turn to first. Search engines like Ask Kids, KidsClick, Yahoo! Kids, Quintura Kids, Sweet Search 4 Me - there are more, and they usually suffice. If they don't, perhaps then we turn to Google - with "Safe Search" options turned on and using carefully chosen keywords in our search.

Links to kids' search engines are listed in the sidebar on this blog, right under the weather link. For easy access, tudents also have them bookmarked through their web browser on computers at school.