Betty White

I have been teaching many years and I have witnessed many famous people come and go as heroes in my classroom, but this year I am very pleased that their hero, in this case heroine, is Betty White!  The last week of school I allow the children to suggest activities that we did not get to do during the year, writing Betty White was one of their top choices.  One young lady in my class loves her so much that she even named her purple scooter "Betty."  When I announced that we would attempt to send her a letter they got so excited and thought she may come visit our class.  I explained to them that there probably wasn't a possibility of  her visiting us and they said if we sent it to "Ellen" she would do it!  The above video expresses the excitement of one of my students.

Vincent van Gogh Paintings

After reading several stories about Vincent and watching the adorable interview with Sophia, the children painted their own moon paintings.

While searching the internet for ideas on Vincent, I ran across the most adorable video by Sophia interviewing Vincent van Gogh.  It is often very difficult to find elementary age appropriate information on many of the great artists of our time. Though she was several years younger than my students, they thoroughly enjoyed the interview. 

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

One of the best video series I have ever viewed with Beaitrix Potter stories is  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MisrUJX3QGU&feature=related  By the end of the video just about every child in my class was speaking with a British accent, which was pretty interesting.  You may think that Peter Rabbit would be below their interest level, but I have always found the opposite response.  There is something almost calming about these simple stories.  Some of our activities included writing character traits for Peter, reading the play of Peter Rabbit (http://www.kidsinco.com/2008/07/the-tale-of-peter-rabbit/), text to self/text to text/text to world, and a creative writing project on how we disobeyed our parents. 

Word Nerd....Acting?

Our word nerd for today happened to be salon. One student had a definite opinion of what salon may mean!

More Word Nerds!

We had some interesting choices for word nerds this week and I loved some of their word illustrations.  I think we have a tendency to limit vocabulary in our society and underestimate their capacity for understanding new vocabulary.  I hope you enjoy the illustrations!

Attack of the Word Nerds!!!!!!!

We celebrated our first Word Nerd Friday.  Each child was asked to bring in the most unusual word that they heard this week.  The winner for Mrs. Harmon's class won with, discombobulated.  My class voted moron as their favorite word.