Visit to grade 3 from the Reading Rotary

Members of the Reading Rotary Club gave a thesaurus to each of our 3rd grade students. Thank you to the Rotary for the donation.

Visit from Scott Magoon (illustrator) and Barbara O'Connor (author)

Children's author Barbara O’Connor visited 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students to share her inspiration behind books she has written.

Reading resident and illustrator, Scott Magoon shared his creativity with students in grades K-3.

See the pictures below.

Creative and Artistic Students

I received this e-mail providing great resources for artisitic and creative students.
Enjoy.

Dear Eric,

We've assembled the below list of art contests for all ages and all abilities. Share these with your students, children, family and friends. There's some great prizes and recognition for winners.


Doodle 4 Google- Answer the question, "If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." in this Google competition

Art Show for Kids- Where you can enter contests, sell your art, and exihibit your pictures.

Refrigerator Artist - Every month, one young artist will be awarded $400 in U.S. savings bonds for their future. Parents may enter one piece of artwork from each artist into the prize drawing each month. Every vote the entry receives from other site users will be another entry, increasing the artist's chances of winning the savings bonds. Deadline for Submissions: Ongoing

Rosey Toys Art Contest - RoseyToys.com has a monthly art contest open to kids 12 and under. There is a different theme each month. The top 5 pieces of art are put on the RoseyToys.com site to have the world vote on the top 3. Each of the top 3 kids will win prizes. The first place artwork will also be featured on our art contest home page for that month.

Character Trait - Sportsmanship and Fairness

The pictures below show the second grade students during our all school assembly where we introduced our character trait of the month - "Sportsmanship and Fairness". As a follow-up to the assembly, classes will be reading and discussing the book "Max for President" for the Culture and Climate Committee's "One School, One Book" program.

The members of the Birch Meadow climate and culture committee decided to implement "One School, One Book" for each of our monthly character themes. So, just as Second Grade has chosen "Max for President", each grade level will choose a children's book that relates to the theme they are responsible for presenting at the assembly and the whole school will share it. A follow-up activity then is based around the book.

Students will earn Birch Meadow Bears this month if they are observed showing sportsmanship and fairness at Birch Meadow. Parents are encouraged to look for their children showing sportsmanship and fairness at home and reward them with a bear. More bears will be sent home this week – be sure to write your child’s name and room number and the reason for the reward on the bear and return it to the office. We will display them in the lobby during Honesty month.

Video issues

Below is a message from the GOOGLE help page indicating they are working on fixing the video issue. Currently many videos are not playing on the GOOGLE site. I will do my best to make sure all my videos are on the Birch Meadow Principal Photo stories link.

Enjoy your vacation.

gatsby
Google Employee
2/8/10
Best answer - gatsby (Google Employee)
Thanks to everyone for all the detailed data on the video display issue. We have enough data now to move forward with our fix, so I'll be locking this thread to keep the house tidy. In the meantime, please keep an eye on our posted Known Issue about this bug, which we'll be updating the second we have more information to share:

SNOW SHOE

During Physical Education class third, fourth and fifth graders had the opportunity to enjoy an outdoor learning activity in winter; they went snowshoeing. This exciting activity is included in the curriculum because it offers student’s a variety of benefits. Snowshoeing offers students the opportunity to engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity where they need to learn to move with an awareness of their “new big” feet. In addition, they practice principles of exercise such as aerobic conditioning, flexibility and muscular endurance and cooperation. The exploration of the outdoors in winter leads to an appreciation of what animal activity is occurring in winter. Students were asked to find animal tracks and determine what direction they were moving in and for what reason. The benefits of exercise and fresh air aren’t the only benefits of the activity. Weather related observations also can be used to promote students were asked to observe their surroundings. For example, why is their snow attached, like a vest, to one side of the trees and not the other? Why is the snow frozen at the bottom of the tree and more snow like at the top? The sense of discovery led them to explore and ask questions beyond what time allowed. Overall the students at Birch Meadow enjoyed the freedom of using the outdoors as their classroom and acquired an appreciation for this mode of travel. They made snow angels and left their tracks and initials in the snow for someone else to explore and discover.