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.

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

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!

Cyberbullying

Fifth graders have been learning what to do when they encounter communications online that make them feel uncomfortable or badly. Students discussed what cyberbullying might look or sound like at the start, then brainstormed ways to handle the situation. Here are some of their solutions:

Tell a teacher or parent. 

Put on safety chat.

Don’t respond back.

Report them to the administrator.

Ask them not to do it again.

Come back later.

Tell the principal.

Turn off chat.

Print it.

Finally, the class talked about the positive results that could occur if the situation were dealt with quickly and effectively.

As a way to represent a hypothetical situation-action-result, students used a free online educational comics generator to make a three or four frame comic. Here's one student's work.

Read For Our School

NHCS is participating in a wonderful opportunity for students to earn books for our school library. The Pearson Foundation is currently sponsoring a reading initiative called “Read For My School” where participating schools are eligible to earn up to 500 free books for their libraries, just by reading. The program runs from February 14th through March 14th and is open to all students.

Registration is necessary in order to participate in the program. The online form can be found at http://www.wegivebooks.org/pf/rfms/register.php  In order to register, students will need to create a username and a password, and provide an email address, his or her birthday, state, and our school name (there is a New Hampton Elementary School registered which is not our school - look for New Hampton Community School!)  Please assist your child with this registration. Once the registration is completed, students can begin reading the online books.  There are over 150 books to choose from at various reading levels. After the book is read, click “Give a Book” for it to be counted towards our school’s total.

In order for NHCS to be eligible for books, we must cumulatively read 50 or more books.  We hope that you will consider registering your child for this program. Please feel free to call or email with any questions you may have. Have fun reading!

'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!

Free Math Apps

Beginning today and for four days only, Everyday Mathematics® is offering free math game apps for your iPhone, an iTouch, or iPad. These games are the same as the Everyday Math online games students play on comptuers and they're electronic versions of the games each grade level plays in class. These games reinforce major concepts presented in our math program. To find the games, go to the iTunes App Store, then search for Everyday Mathematics. After April 16th, the games will go back to their original price - so get them while you can!

A Gift for You!

In school, we use many free programs but our favorite one is TuxPaint! It's introduced at the kindergarten level, then used quite a bit by the primary grade children for projects and work and also for "play". Even the older kids love TuxPaint - though they don't use it for class at that age!

TuxPaint is a free download for Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems. You can find more about this program at the TuxPaint website - and you can download your own copy to use at home!

Kindergarten Paints!

In ICT class, kindergartners have been painting! Using a free paint program, they've learned about brush sizes and color selection and how to use "Magic" to fill color inside the lines.

This student made a scuba diver swimming under water. In the coming weeks, children will be drawing and painting a picture that will become the first artifact in their digital portfolios!

The program we use is called TuxPaint and it's free! You can download your own copy right here!

A Gift for You!

Christmas week both second and third graders used TuxPaint, a free painting program, to draw a seasonal picture and make a label or a sentence about their work. You can have TuxPaint on your computer at home, too - download it here. Happy Holidays!!