Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Cairo is Coming to Our Classroom

On Thursday, March 8, 2012 our awareness of what life is like in Africa will be broadened. We are lucky to have the opportunity to experience the contents of a Cairo Culture Kit, which has been carefully collected by researchers at UNC. The contents will include popular games, books, movies and shows. It will also include Egypt's national flag, a uniform, and a natural toothbrush (made from a fragrant twig). 

To prepare for the Cairo Culture Kit we need to collect a culture kit of our own. Think about the popular books, movies, and games that your children interact with daily. Does your family have any favorite Disney books or movies? Do you read books to your children that teach a lesson? Do you ever let your kids play games or work with puzzles because you find them educational? What kind of toothbrush does your child use? Please send an example of one of these items to school by March 8th, so we can compare and contrast our culture kit with the Cairo Culture Kit. Here is a link to the article that one of you awesome parents sent me...Culture Kits Provide Students Global Perspectives. Thank you! 


Friday, February 17, 2012

Digital Storytelling--Fun for Families!

Have you ever hear of Storybird? It is so much fun! I just created my first digital story in about 5 minutes. You and your kids would have a blast practicing literacy skills by making up stories together. Kleinspiration wrote the blog that helped steer me to Storybird. I have plans to use Storybird in the classroom. I hope you have a chance to try it at home as well.

Mark Your Calendars...

February 21st is CiCi's Pizza Night from 6:00-9:00pm in Oak Creek Plaza (15-501 and Garret Rd.). When you order make sure you mention that you are from Creekside to earn our school 10% of sales. Thank you for supporting Creekside!

February 24th--Yearbook orders are due!

Valentine's Day Activities

We had a great time on Valentine's Day!

We participated in many different activities that centered around Valentine's Day. We used Conversation Hearts during math and writing to spice things up a bit.

In math, we used the Conversation Hearts to make bar graphs by color. We also counted the letters on each heart to make tally charts.

Before writing I read The Best Valentine. It is an alphabet book about Big Benny who does not receive any Valentines, but in the end he gets something even better. The assignment was to write a letter to Big Benny to make him feel better about not receiving any valentines. Students were encouraged to include as many ABC words from the story as they could. Then, as an extra challenge they were asked to use Conversation Hearts to add to their stories where ever it made since to do so. The results were amazing! Your kids are so creative. Here are a couple of examples...1 and 2.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

February News Flash

Feb. 14         Valentine’s Day card exchange!

Feb. 17         Black History Magazine Project Due (see homework packet for information)

Feb. 24         No School (Teacher workday)

March 14         Science Festival 6:30-8:00pm

 WELCOME
 Mrs. Knight is our new Instructional Assistant. She is a certified teacher and has taught 7th grade. She is working on completing an add-on to her license which will allow her to teach elementary-aged students. 

HOMEWORK
February Homework Packet will be going home on Monday, February 6, 2012

OTHER INFORMATION
Valentine’s Day information:
We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day by exchanging Valentines cards on February 14th. As a class we will be decorating bags to put our Valentines in.

We need your help! The children will need Valentine’s themed decorations for their bags (hearts, cupid, love, flowers, etc). Stickers, stencils, doilies, feathers and other lovely things are much appreciated by Friday, Feb. 10!

To help your child address his/her Valentines to their classmates, we have provided the class list below. (If your child chooses to participate, please make sure your child gives a Valentine to every child in the class.)

Pascale             Elizabeth                       Tania                Parker
Bhumika           Thomas                        Lilly                  Maria Joselin
Julian                Caiden                          Dev                  Nisha
Miriam              Ayden                          Amaya             Bryan
Maria Lili          Dreizin                          Lillian               Arashdeep
Roseyln            Calvin