Summer Reading

Welcome to Summer! It's a time for being outside with friends and family, for having fun in the sun, and not having to worry about school and homework! But please don't forget about the importance of reading during the months you're away from school.

In ICT, we talked about all the reading programs there are for kids this summer. The Gordon-Nash Library is having a Dig into Reading celebration through much of the summer, with special programs on Tuesday nights from 6:30-7:30. TD Bank in Bristol will award you with $10 in a special savings account if you read only ten books. And our own school will have ice cream and a coupon for a $5 book at the Fall Book Fair for students who meet the reading challenge and color in all 50 shovels on the form you brought home - or that you download from the link above.

Any of these programs would be easy to do - and you can keep on reading all summer long!

GoogleDocs & TuxPaint

First graders are pros at TuxPaint! We looked at some artwork in books and noticed that illustrators sometimes draw in a dark color like black and "fill in" with other colors. So we tried it with TuxPaint. Using the "Magic"tool with "Fill" sure makes coloring in easier! Students illustrated sentences written in GoogleDocs Presentation slides - a soon-to-be slide show about what they learned about plants!

BOGO Book Fair!

It's time for NHCS's Spring Book Fair - and just like last year, it's Buy One - Get One Free! The Book Fair will be open next Wednesday through Friday. Your teacher will give you more information on Friday. But for now, click here to see the hours it will be open. See you at the Book Fair!

Poet and Author Joyce Sidman

In the last few weeks, many of the classes have heard the poem titled SPRING in the book, Red Sings from Treetops: a year in color by Joyce Sidman. Ms. Sidman is a wonderful author who writes about the natural world, in short informational pieces as well as in poetry. Her writing really shows how fascinating and beautiful nature can be!

Our Library Media Center has several of her books of poetry. Click on these links for book trailers to see and hear samples of her wonderful books!

Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night 

Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature

Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors

Vocabulary!!

Did you finish the final chapter of Frindle? This is one of the best endings to a book I have ever read! Mrs. Granger rocks!!

On Friday at NHCS there will be a Vocabulary Parade to celebrate the end of the One Book/Once School program. Kids may pick a word, any word (well, as long as it's appropriate for school!) then dress up to to portray that word. Have you chosen your word yet? Here are some PBS Vocabulary games to play that may introduce you to some new words to help you choose.

I'm afraid my word will be "ABSENT" - because I won't be at NHCS that day! I'm already sorry I'll miss the fun! If you want to, leave your word choice in the comments below.

Frindle: Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

Uh-oh! Someone anonymously sent the fifth grade class picture to the newspaper - and they printed it! Anonymous means the sender didn't give his or her name. Who would do such a thing - and why? Leave your thoughts below...

Frindle: Nick's Teacher

What do you think of the character of Mrs. Granger. Isn't she SO mean to make kids write I am writing this punishment with a pen 100 times? She must really want kids to call frindles by their real names - pens!

What do you think about this? Is she right to insist that kids use the correct word, not a made-up one? Why is she making such a big fuss about this? Is she just horrible? Or is she just doing her job?

One Book/One School: Frindle!

This is the fifth year we've had a One Book/One
School celebration at New Hampton Community School! By now, you  all have your family's book and the packet with the calendar and the trivia questions. Maybe tonight, you read a little bit about Nick Allen, the main character. What kind of a kid do you think Nick is?

The setting for Frindle is a school in New Hampshire! Maybe Nick's school is like ours! Frindle is a wonderful story that will have you cheering at the end. I liked it so much, I'm going to read it again!

If you need extra copies of the materials in the take home packet, click here! And what's that black pen for? Hmmmm.......

Keyboarding Practice

Every January, third graders begin to learn to type. The program we use, Type to Learn 4, is a series of lessons, games, and challenges through which students progress to learn the efficient use of the keyboard. For kids who like to practice at home or in after school programs, here's a link to a previous  blog post about alternatives to Type to Learn: http://snipurl.com/26klttv.

And for all you third graders, this is how fast you'll eventually type if you train your brain the correct way now. Sit up straight, index fingers on the f and j, curl your fingers...

Phases of the Moon

This week we read Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and a few monthly selections in A Child's Calendar by John Updike. As a follow up, we looked at an online moon phases calendar.  This calendar shows the phase of the moon on any given day of the month. You can even manipulate the calendar to find out what the moon phase was on the day you were born - or what it will look like on the day you  graduate from high school! Students were fascinated with this concept of moon phases and quickly saw the natural pattern that emerges from tracking the shape of the moon over time. I've printed this month's off and hung it outside the Library Media Center so students can use it for reference!

Free Rice

Fifth graders spent some time this week practicing vocabulary at the Free Rice website. For each correct answer to a vocabulary question, grains of rice are donated to United Nations World Food Program. By our calculations, in the few minutes they worked at the website, fifth graders donated 18,770 grains of rice. It's a nice example of people helping people via the internet.

Fourth Grade Hopes & Dreams

This term, fourth graders have worked on defining their hopes and dreams for the school year. In the process, we explored themes of copyright and fair use of images and learned to create a presentation using Google Docs for Education.

Ladybug Book #6 : Blackout

This picture book tells the story of a city family who experiences a loss of electrical power on a hot summer night. Many of the details of the story were taken from the experiences of New Yorkers the night of the Northeast blackout of 2003, as shown in this book trailer.

When asked what they would do to entertain themselves if the power went out, first graders responded:

Use the iPad.
Play a board game.
Play with a friend.
Color a picture. 
Dress up. 
Swim in your pool if it was summer. 
Use a headlamp. 
Play with a remote control vehicle if the batteries work. 
Play with your toys. 
Jump rope.
Sit in a circle and tell spooky stories with a flashlight.
Read at books and learn from it.
Go bike riding by the headlights of your car.

The beautiful illustrations from this book have already won a 2012 Caldecott Award! Maybe it will win the Ladybug Award, too!

Ladybug Nominee #5: Stars

Stars is a beautifully illustrated book by Mary Lyn Ray, a popular children's author who lives in New Hampshire, in Danbury! Some children remembered that she was a visitor to our school just last year. The illustrator is Marla Frazee, who has won several awards for her artwork in children's books.

After reading about Stars, first and second graders looked at Starfall, a website for young readers. We read an online book there called Pumpkin, Pumpkin and observed in the photos that pumpkin blossoms do look like stars, just as Mary Lyn Ray wrote in her book!

Many of us hope that Stars wins the Ladybug Award because Mary Lyn Ray would not have to travel very far to pick up her trophy!

Ladybug Nominnee #4: Neville

Poor Neville. His family moves to a new house in a new neighborhood and he has lost all his friends. Ask your student to explain the creative way Neville solves this problem and makes many new friends in a very short period of time! In several classes, there was great debate about whether Neville was being honest!

At one point, Neville "walks around the block" in his new neighborhood. We turned to GoogleMaps and annotated an image of Bristol to better understand this concept - because New Hampton doesn't have many neighborhood blocks!  Do you see the streets that Neville could have walked around? Students found lots of reasons why that would be called a "block"!

One student suggested that the fleet of yellow school busses looked like sticks of butter! We equated this view of town to what a bird must see as he flies over!

Hopes & Dreams

Both fourth and fifth graders are composing hopes and dreams for this new school year. Students are word-processing these statements in GoogleDocs (now GoogleDrive), making corrections and revisions as they type. Fourth graders will make a small Google Presentation slide show featuring their hopes and dreams, while fifth graders will use a password-protected educational edition of Glogster and will compose their hopes and dreams on a digital poster of sorts. These projects will be stored in the child's digital portfolio here at school.

Ladybug Nominee #3: Calvin Can't Fly

Calvin Can't Fly is a story about a starling who would rather read books than learn to fly. When the time comes for his flock to migrate, Calvin needs the help of his family to follow along. But Calvin's knowledge ends up saving the flock from  a great disaster. Children loved the ending of this Ladybug nominated book!

See the flock of starlings on the cover of the book? Here's a video showing how starlings like Calvin and his family swarm and swoop as a group. How do they do that?

Ladybug Nominee #2: Cloudette

Cloudette, by Tom Lichtenheld, is the story of a tiny cloud who likes being small but sometimes wishes to be big and powerful like the other clouds in the sky. Cloudette is the second book primary grade students have heard that is nominated for the 2012 NH Ladybug Award.

In this book, children encounter an asterisk in the text, next to an over sized RIBBIT from a frog. The reader needs to look to to the bottom of the page and find a second asterisk to see that the frog is actually saying "thank you" to Cloudette! An asterisk is one of the elements of print students will see as they read more difficult texts, especially non-fiction. We talked about how the "aster" part of the word means "star" - like in astronomy and astronaut!

Bigger clouds called Cloudette nicknames like "pipsqueak", "small-fry" and "shortcake". We took a few minutes to talk about name-calling and how some names can make us feel happy and loved, while others can make us feel badly. Students shared pet names that parents and grandparents called them, like "sweetie", "peanut" and "pumpkin"! We like those names!

Fall Book Fair!

Click here for the link to the Scholastic Book Fair website for NHCS! Come and visit the Fair at school on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday this week (check hours on the page) or shop online for the next two weeks to get great books and to support our school! Thank you!!

Book Review: Emily's Fortune

After Emily is orphaned, she is supposed to go with her closest blood relative, mean Uncle Victor. But she really wants to live with her nice, kind Aunt Hilda instead, so Emily sets out to find her. On her way to Redbud, Emily meets a friend who tries to protect her from Uncle Victor, who is now after her. Their strange adventures are entertaining to the reader and the end of the story is a satisfying one where they live happily ever after. You should totally read Emily's Fortune. It's one of the best books I have ever read.

by Bailey