Happy Christmas to All!

Ah-ha! Santa at last!

I am listening to bells right now!  Mrs Strobel is leading her group of students in Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.  The kids playing BINGO just got blackout, and the gingerbread men and women are looking super.  I also see reindeer candy canes and Santa Treat Holder Ornaments. . . . oh, if only my phone were being cooperative.  We'd have a picture to show off those Santas!  (a little later)  . . . and now Mrs Allen has the kids singing a song about Marshmallow Worlds in the Winter . . . Yum!

Thanks to the Moms who helped and were able to change their plans to be here on Friday instead of Monday.  Mr Matthews will be here on Monday morning with his Idaho History Presentation and Activities!  It'll be the Best Presentation Ever!

PS September Field Trip

Back in September I barely knew how to make calls on my cell phone!  I'm only a tiny bit smarter than that now, but I have figured out a way to get pictures from it to here . . . as in all the pictures from our Idaho History Projects!

So here is the picture I took on our field trip to the Rexburg Cemetery.  Oh, for that beautiful weather. 

Kids are taking down info from Thomas E Ricks' headstone and getting ready to go on the tombstone rubbing "Treasure Hunt."

Idaho History Museum

Petroglyph

A village with very fancy teepees

Wow!  (I like that word!)  This classroom looks like the American History Museum in Washington, D.C. -- well, almost!  It certainly smells great with all the dugout canoes and the dugout shelter which were made from soap.

To the left is a petroglyph created with plaster of paris.  The artist told us that he is showing a warrior ready to go to battle.  Notice his shield and spear.

This village was built inside a shoe box!  Thank goodness for the flash on my camera!

This village shows teepees and a long house.  The Nez Perce lived in long houses before they got horses.  After horses, they adopted the culture of the Plains Indians which included teepees.

We have a battle going on in this village, although, I'm thinking that the women will be happy to find such big berries to gather for winter!

This horse is pulling a travois.  Before Native Americans got horses from the Spanish, they used dogs to pull travois.  Some tribes called their horses Elk Dogs, big as an elk, but useful like a dog. hummmm

Pictograph is painting on a rock.
Notice the hunter and his prey.

Time Flies!

Wow, the end of the first trimester is only two weeks away.  Anything that needs to be handed in is due on the morning of November 23.  That's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Also, that Tuesday, we have a special guest coming.  Mr Henry Matthews is a stamp collector who has spend many years creating collections of stamps on topics which are dear to him.  Idaho History is at the top of the list.  He has a great presentation and we look forward to it.

The Idaho History Projects are due this Friday, Nov. 12.  We already have one turned in.  It's a great representation of a dugout shelter.

Mr Gentile is very excited about the items which have been brought to school to send to our servicemen, but he reminds us that we still have two days to bring things (until Wednesday, November 10th).  I think our story might even appear in the Rexburg paper.  Something to look forward to!

This is looking to be the Best Week Ever!

Oh, for the Gym!

Wow!  The Talent Show was great! 

The lunchroom . . . not so much.  But who can argue with the PE class?

Thanks to all the parents, sisters and brothers who came to watch their kids shine.  I loved it all but especially the dance numbers.  The physical fitness of the boys and girls is amazing.

Equally amazing to me are kids who can memorize music!  Awesome!

Lost Boys

And . . . what a better day to end a ghost story than Halloween . . . although reviewers call Lost Boys a "thriller" or "suspense," definitely there are ghosts!   One reviewer even adds this book is for "those who like their suspense mixed with the supernatural."  Interesting!   A great read . . . now back to Realistic Visionary, a study of George Washington, and then on to the four volumes on Abraham Lincoln for the Teaching American History Class I'm taking.

Hoping your upcoming week will be the best week ever!

Books! . . . and Talent Show

So, this is a sort of post-script to Parent Teacher Conference.  I learned a lot about the kids in my class . . . but I also got a couple of great suggestions for books and authors to read.  I can't even remember how Mrs Bird and I got onto the subject of reading Orson Scott Card, but we did.  Now reading OSC is like a huge stretch for me because my favorite genres don't usually include anything close to fantasy or science fiction.  Mrs Bird was talking about the book Lost Boys and I quickly took note of the title and decided to read it. . . soon.  Then this weekend, our daughter, Katy was up and I asked her if she'd read it since she is a huge fan of OSC (she's the reason I've ever read any of Card's works to begin with!) 

Bottom line is that I love to know what comes next in the book.  I sometimes HAVE to know what comes next in the book.  After talking to Katy, and prying just a little info out of her, I am sooooo excited to read Lost Boys and I'll let you know what I think once I've finished.  I'm thinking it's not a read aloud for fourth grade, but something to stretch one's thinking of the fabric of the universe.

Talent Show next Tuesday at 1:00.  If you can make it, great, if not, you already know your kids are amazing.  My jaw dropped a couple of time during practice today.  Yep, amazing! 

This year really is shaping up to the Best Year Ever!

Parent Teacher Conferences

When I first saw the calendar for this school year, I thought I was going to hate The New Format / Time-DayS for the conferences, but it was nice.  Seeing the parents of "only" 15 students per day was a pleasant surprise . . . and how can I complain about Friday off?  And after 21 years of conferences, I stumbled onto a magic phrase.  I've always asked parents if there were concerns they wanted to make me aware of, and they usually just smiled and said, no, everything is great ---  but this year I added "or anything else that needs to come to my attention."  Wow!  Thank you, parents, for sharing with me.  I feel so much able to understand your children and prepared to help them over their personal rough spots.

How could you not know that we finished reading Where the Red Fern Grows this week?  How can a kid not love it?  Well, okay, if a boy gets a little choked up, it hurts his pride --- that's a reason, I suppose!

Looking forward to getting back into the swing of things on Monday!  Have the Best Weekend Ever!

Read-A-Thon

Wow, already two days into the read-a-thon and I haven't read a word yet!  Better get busy!

All the potatoes are already dug from our garden but our tomatoes are ripening in the green house.  Last week I sprouted sunflower seeds for the first time.  Yum!

And Math?  I'm thinking that the Harvest Break is a total of 11 days and two are gone so how many does that leave now?  Let's see . . . I was three years old when the Flintstones first hit the airwaves on tv . . . I wonder how old that makes me?  . . . . (Hint: google Flintstones!  ;)

Reading:  Read-read-read-read!  Remember although getting money from pledges is nice, the most important part of the read-a-thon is reading!!!

Idaho History:  Could this be the warmest beginning of October ever?  I wonder how I could research that?  Hummmmm, I bet I could start at Google.

Science:  "red sails at night, sailors' delight. . . "  what does that mean???

Can't wait until Oct 11!  See you then!

Fall is in the Air

The weather was record breaking warm this weekend, but we aren't going to let that fool us.  Fall has arrived.

Next week is Harvest Break (Potato Harvest, Harvest Vacation . . . I hear it called all sorts of things!).  Watch for information about the Harvest Read-a-thon sponsored by the PTO.

Math: more on geometry and missing addends in addition and subtraction.  It's the first step to Algebra.For example:  M - 35 = 72  (Switch operations and solve in reverse!  Sounds crazy, but what it really means is, if you can't subtract down, then add up . . . once the problem is written vertically.)
Spelling and Grammar: Review of the past four weeks.
Reading: Two short stories about journeys.  The first an excerpt from A Cricket in Times Square. The second a true story about a little girl who was "mailed" to her grandmother, The Parcel Post Kid.  The cool thing about this story is that it took place in Idaho about a hundred years ago.

Thanks again to Mrs Allen who sings the best songs ever with us!

WOW! Stop the Presses!

I've been teaching for many years and sending home weekly folders for just about as many.  Last week was the first week EVER in the last twenty years that EVERY student brought back his or her folder!  Amazing!

And if that wasn't wonderful enough, these awesome students did it AGAIN this week. Two weeks in a row.  A record! 

Will we make it three weeks in a row next week?

Horses and Huckleberries

What do huckleberries, Appalousas, star garnets and monarch butterflies have in common?  They are all official symbols of the State of Idaho.  So are potatoes, Rocky Mountain bluebirds, white pines, rainbow trout, syringas, peregrine falcons, the Hagerman horse fossils, the square dance!  This week we will be studying them and choosing one of them to create a pillow top.

The Rexburg Civic Club is sponsoring a Spelling Bee for fourth graders in the Madison District.  A list went home this week, but if you need another copy of the word list, please email me at school (smithb@mail.d321.k12.id.us) and I send it right away.

Spelling: 10 pairs of homophones. 
Grammar Skill: common nouns
Math: Perimeter, geometric shapes, lines, line segments, rays and angles -- plus continuing to practice addition, multiplication, and subtraction.

We've finished reading Brighty of the Grand Canyon and will watch the movie on Friday afternoon.  We will then compare and contrast the story elements of the book and movie, including characters, setting, and plot.  Most are the same, but some are very different.

This is going to be the best week ever!  ;)

Thomas E Ricks and Company

Our field trip to the Rexburg Cemetery was fantastic.  Both Mrs. Hancock's and my class went, so there were a lot of kids in the cemetery this afternoon.  First we visited the Thomas E Ricks Family Monument and calculated how old Mr Ricks lived to be.  Then the students made rubbings of the designs they found on the headstones.  Some of their favorites were four-wheelers, music notes, airplanes and baseball bats.  Some had beautiful kanji (Japanese characters used in writing) on them. We noticed that the older gravestones were more plain and simple than the newer ones. 

We are almost finished reading Brighty of the Grand Canyon.  Even though the movie is old and doesn't follow the story line of the book very faithfully, the fourth graders are sure they want to watch it.  I'll let you know what they thought of it.

Tue, Sep 14, 2010

Mrs Allen came on Monday and sang with us! Amazing! We started learning "Accentuate the Positive" and "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head" and finished with the rollicking nursery rhyme song "Through it out the Window." Doesn't get much better than this!

Monday, September 13, 2010

Had a great time at the Eastern Idaho State Fair on Saturday.  Tiger ears = YUM!

This week we are reading about the Titanic.  We will read about a family who was sailing on the ship and also about how Dr Robert Ballard and his team of scientists and explorers finally found the wreckage.  Grammar skill for this week is compound sentences.

Math: We are continuing to review addition and subtraction.  We'll be solving problems with missing numbers in both types of problems.  We'll also be studying "real life number lines" like thermometers, analog clocks, and speedometers. We'll also be reviewing multiplication.

History of Rexburg: We'll be visiting the Rexburg Cemetery on Wednesday afternoon.  Some parents have asked if they could come as chaperones.  Please meet us at the cemetery as the bus will be full.  We'll be arriving at the cemetery about 1:00 pm and leaving about 2:00.  We'll visit the grave site of the Thomas E Ricks family and also make rubbings of the interesting and important designs on the headstones.

Individual student pictures will be taken on Thursday, September 16th.  An exciting day!

It's going to be the best week ever!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Labor Day is behind us.  Mine was great.  Hoping yours was, too.

This week we will be reading Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say.  It is a story of immigration but also returning to one's roots. In the context of the story, we will also be discussing World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  We'll also read Bicycle Man, Mr Say's memories of seeing American soldiers for the first time after the war.  Spelling words will have the sounds of /o/ and /i/.  Grammar skills for this week are studying subjects and predicates.

Math: We are continuing to review addition and subtraction.  We'll be solving problems with missing numbers in both types of problems.  

History of Rexburg: We'll be talking about the failure of the Teton Dam and watching a video about it.  We'll also learn about the number of Veterans who have served from Rexburg during past wars and conflicts and the Veterans Memorial at Smith Park.

It's going to be the best week ever!  ;)

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Back to School Night

I look forward to meeting my student's parents at Back to School night.  This is a busy time of year and so I appreciate those who can make it.

Just in case you missed it, here are the topics and a few details about the things we discussed:

• News and Notes - goes home Tuesdays in the Weekly Folder. Has announcements on the top front, list of this week's spelling words, a place to record time spent reading at home, and a homework assignment on the back. Students bring the homework assignment back the next week.  Folders can come back to school anytime.
• The format of Saxon Math is different now that the students are copying problems from a text book rather than using worksheets.  Students are encouraged to copy the problems onto their paper so parents can easily understand what their students are doing.
• In Idaho History we will be studying Native Americans of Idaho, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Fur Trappers and Traders, Missionaries, Miners, Pioneers, the Nez Perce War and Agriculture and Industry.
• Power School is a great way to keep track of your student's grades and even pay for school lunch.  If you need to know your student's username and password, please contact me or Mrs Yeaman.
• We will be discussing current events daily in our classroom. Students at this age are typically just discovering global events and are trying to make sense of them.  Weather, earthquakes and disasters are the most typical topics students choose to talk about.
• Students are always welcome to bring a treat to help celebrate their birthdays, but this is not necessary. 

I can be reached by email at smithb@mail.d321.k12.id.us  If I have not replied to you in twenty-fours, give me a call at school as your email may have ended up in the Junk Mail Folder.