Blog About Books

One of the best ways to find out about great books is from your friend's recommendations. For homework in April, your child will be asked to use the Blogging About Books tab to write about a book they have read. The blog post should include the title and author, a little bit about the book, and whether they liked the book or not. Your child may also choose to recommend it to someone. Please see Mrs. Haydon's Blog to see how her class is blogging about books.

News Flash!

Hello, all! I hope you are having a pleasant weekend. Remember, tomorrow is a teacher workday. Some students were telling me that they plan to work on their fish projects on Monday. I have heard many great ideas. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Classroom Update: We have started to tally up our good behavior. Each time our class receives a compliment, or earns a perfect score in Specials, or transitions well throughout the day we record our accomplishment with a tally mark on the board. When we collect 30 tally marks we will celebrate with a voted upon activity. We already have 4 tally marks! We voted last week for our first celebration to include "Performances." Several students will showcase their talents. Please let me know if you would like to join us.

J March 26th—No School Teacher Work Day

J March 27th—Beginning of the 4th Quarter

J March 29th—Report Cards go home

J March 30th—Rock Presentation

J April 2nd—PTA Meeting at 7:00pm

J Spring Break—April 6th-April 13th

J April 19th—Volunteer Breakfast 8:35-9:30

J April 25th—Last Early Release Day at 1:30pm

J April 26th—Field Day!

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! 

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.

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 7^th 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 14^th. 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