Green Eggs and Ham

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We  had a little Dr. Seuss fun after our author visit from Samantha Vamos. Cat in the Hat walked around the school handing out bookmarks to all the students. We also served green eggs and ham for lunch.  From start to finish, it was a fun day celebrating reading and Dr. Seuss’s life as one of our most popular children’s authors.

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Furry Friends Are Reading Helpers

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Our Mission: To inspire children to discover the joy of reading while developing literacy skills and confidence in a safe environment using Reading With Rover Dogs.

       It’s time to spread the “WOOF” about some exciting Reading with Rover news! If you live in the Seattle, Washington area, I hope you will take the time to watch Evening Magazine tonite at 7pm. King 5  Evening Magazine  news correspondent Kim Holcomb recently filmed Becky Bishop, Woodmoor teacher Betsy Leahy, Diana Trupiano with Frodo,and some other Reading with Rover dogs in action. Viewers will be able to see what a great program this is and how they can become involved!

Our own  students know what a great program this is and how much it has helped them with their reading. Jett, Silas and Reese are our local Rover rockstars and know first-hand how much fun it is to read with the kids! I hope you will tune in and give King 5 a big “WOOF”! Are you a blogger from out of the Seattle area?  You will be able to view the interview after the show airs on the website. http://www.king5.com/on-tv/evening-magazine/Reading-with-Rover-116769389.html You can also find more information about the Reading with Rover program and how it works on their website: http://www.readingwithrover.orgP8040236

If you have read to one of the Reading with Rover dog, leave us a comment!

Let us know the best part of reading to a dog!

Have you ever read to a dog in a different part of the world? Let us know!

W

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A Mi’kmaq Indian Cinderella:The Rough-Face Girl

The rags-to-riches Cinderella story is probably the world’s best known story. The first recorded version is called Yeh-shen and dates to 9th centurey AD China. Now somewhere between 350 and 1500 versions of the story exist in cultures all over the world.

Usually when students think of Cinderella, they think of the French version of Cinderella by Perrault (1697). This is the version Walt Disney used as the basis for his Disney Cinderella movie.Yet, could there be a Native American Cinderella with mean stepsisters and a lovely girl who marries the wonderful boy in the end?girl

Our 4th graders are studying Native American legends and recently read The Rough-Face Girl by Rafe Martin and illustrated by David Shannon. The object of reading this book was to listen for similarities or differences between The Rough-Face Girl and the traditional Cinderella stories. Since Native American legends also communicate a lesson for people to learn from, they had to figure out what the lesson of the story was.

Before our students explain about the story, here are some photos to help you to understand the story.

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Along the shores of Lake Ontario

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Two means sisters dressed up in beautiful clothes to go visit The Invisible Being,

but they couldn’t see him and were sent away.

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The Rough-Face girl also dressed up in a birch bark dress she had

made and decorated herself.

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She could see The Invisible Being and his bow and arrow.

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And his sled runners in the sky….

 

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The sister told her to bathe in the lake where her skin became

beautiful again, and her hair long and glossy.

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They married and lived in great gladness.

 

 

Now we have a question for you.

Have you ever read a Cinderella story?

If you live in another country, is there a Cinderella story in your culture?

Please send us a comment and let us know!

 

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Green Lawns, Twine and 12 Year Olds

Green lawns, balls of twine and 12 year old kids? You are probably wondering how those topics could possibly relate to one another. Well, really they’re not….and they are topics of the new books in our library!

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Lawn Boy Returns continues the funny story of the 12 year old boy who becomes a millionaire by mowing lawns. Lawn Boy only wanted to make enough money to buy a new inner tube for his bicycle tire and ended up with a stockbroker, a prizefighter, property and more problems than any 12 year old wants to handle. Equal parts quirky and funny-check out this new book by Paulsen, author of Hatchet.

 

 

Dan Gutman’s book, The Genius Files, is the first of what looks like a new thriller adventure series. Genious 12 year old twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald (yes, those really are their names) join their parents on an RV cross-country trip visiting the Spam museum, escaping harm in some sand dunes and deciphering geniuscodes that lead them to places like The World’s Largest Ball of Twine and The House on the Rock. Gutman includes sidebar notes with information the reader can use to track the trip using GoogleMaps. If you are a Gutman fan, or liked the 39 Clues series, then you will definitely want to read this new book.

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Amazing Albania

Amazing research is happening around school!  Recently three students  decided to do some research on their own and made a poster with facts and gave a speech in front of their classroom. Check out what they did on the mini-video! I hope more kids get the research buzz!

Now…What will you do for research?

Do you like animals, countries, fancy cars?

Tell us about a fact you learned!

 

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Leadership Class is Helping Everyone

How did we ever live at our school without our Leadership Class? Every Friday afternoon the 6th graders meet for Leadership Class. Their purpose is to learn how to work together to better themselves and our school. Mrs. Higgins and Ms. Breier are their leadership mentors and are guiding them through this process. What I love about the leadership class is that they are helping our school. They clean the grounds, they pick up all the recycling, they take care of computers-in short they do any project that is asked of them. Each student picks a project that best suits him or her and they do their work with pride.

  I have been very fortunate lately to be able to work with part of the leadership class. Their purpose is to create a movie about our school for new parents and students, whose primary language is not English. This movie has been  the dream of Mrs. Woodruff, our ELL instructor, for a long time. Finally this year we are working to make our dream come true! The movie will be narrated in  different languages and will be available for parents to view when they enroll their students at school. It covers the basics about the school such as who the principal is, the office staff, specialist teachers, recess rules and play areas, lunch, popcorn Wednesdays, school arrival/pickup  and so on.

Our movie team volunteered to be part of this project. They have taken the pictures, loaded them into our movie program, and are now doing the translation work. Everything has been written first in English, and now teams of experts are working on translating into their native languages. I walked around the library yesterday afternoon in amazement as kids we conversing in Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Ukranian, Russian, Tagalog, and French. It was like being in a mini United Nations meeting! These kids are experts in their languages and it is so incredible that the Leadership Class gives them a way to bring out their strengths and do something very worthwhile for our school!

I can’t wait to see the final movies! It’s going to be great! To EVERYONE involved in the ELL Movie Project – Way to Go! You are doing awesome work!

Mrs. Hembree

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Mummies and their Mysteries- Student Review by Gavin

MUMMIES & their mysteries  By Charlotte Wilcox

Student Review by Gavin

          img65708  What is a mummy? The dead body of an animal or human that does not decay after dying is a mummy. Mummies are different from fossils and skeletons.

 Mummies have been found on every continent.  Egyptian mummies have been discovered deep inside pyramids. The Incan empire believed in life after death and that every one deserved to be mummified, so millions of mummies remain in baskets all along the west coast of South America. The flint Mammoth cave is located in the state of Kentucky where there is a message written on the cave wall left by a mummy looters. The four corners region of the U.S. is where ranchers found the first native basket makers mummy in 1889. Mummies have even been found preserved in the ice of the South Pole, northern Canada, Alaska and the Alps. These are the remains of sailors and explorers, hikers and nomads from ranging up to 2500 years ago. Scientists have discovered that China has some of the best preserved mummies in the world.    The mummies were wrapped in 20 layers of silk cloth, placed in 7 nested coffins, and surrounded by 5 tons of charcoal and 3 feet of clay.

Buddhist priests were known to go on a starvation diet for 3 years, and when he died his body would be embalmed, painted with ink or dye and placed in a barrel. But that’s not all, a huge number of mummies have been found in European Bogs. If you are on a quest to find a mummy, Denmark or Northern Germany are the places to go, more mummies are found there than anywhere else in the world. Today you can usually see mummies on display in museums or private homes in many places around the world.

I think mummification is kind of sad because of how the people died and what has been done to their bodies. The steps to making a mummy are rather strange to me.

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PebbleGo and Penguins

Our primary students are learning about penguins on the PebbleGo database.PebbleGoWebImage On PebbleGo, students can read or listen and read about facts on lots of different animals, and earth and space.  Here are some facts they researched:

There are about 2 million King penguins in the world. The King penguin is the second largest penguin in the world.

Juan, Leon, and Chase

Emperor penguins stand nearly 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall.

Elisa, Tina and Emily

African penguins have short legs. They stand 1 to 2 feet tall.

Adelie penguins are birds. They are about 28 inches or 71 centimeters tall.

Matteo, Syon, and Taylor

In the summer, penguins dive and fish in the water.

Alex, David, Anthony and Josa

Emperor penguins can stay underwater for 20 minutes!

Ola, Angela and Dakota

Emperor penguins eat fish, squid and krill. The male emperor penguins balance the egg on their feet.

Melody and Kaylee

Polar animals live near the north pole or south pole. These areas are very cold and windy. Polar animals live with snow and ice all around.

Isabella, and Jake

Emperor penguins live in Antartica.

Gabe

African penguins stand 1-2 feet tall.

Brandt and Terrion

Emperor penguins ar the world’s largest penguins. They can’t fly.

Taylor and Daphanie and Hunter

Adelie penguins are 28 inches tall and eat krill. They steal rocks from other penguins for their nests!

Natalie and Grace

King penguins have orange feathers on their chest and ears. They live on cold islands around Antarctica.

Ian and Kobe

The King penguin in the second largest penguin in the world.

Tim

There are about 2 million penguins in the world.

Sean

Penguins feed their chicks by throwing up food into the chicks’ mouth.

Sabrina, Haley & Katelyn

King penguins live on cold land.

Bella, Jordan and Max

African penguins are birds with short legs.

Mark & Kazuma

Adelie penguins eat snow instead of drinking water.

Peyton & Lupita

Emperor penguins can stay under water for 20 minutes.

Alex

 

Now we would like to hear your comments!

 

What do you know about penguins?

Do you have a favorite penguin book?

Have you ever seen a real penguin, either in a zoo or in the wild?

 

We look forward to reading comments from our blogging friends around the world!

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January Student Book Reviews

rubyRuby Holler by Sharon Creech. Review by Jack

 All good books catch the audience in the first paragraph.  This book caught me in the first sentence on the back; “Welcome to Ruby Holler, the one and only Ruby Holler, your lives will never be the same.”  Well, I know what you’re thinking, that’s really corny.  That’s what I thought-until I read it.

 Magic doesn’t have to be making something disappear, imagination is the greatest magic of all.  In this book the two kids use their imaginations to get through almost everything. If you want to enter a world of magic, all you have to do is read this book.  Personally, one of my favorites.

 

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. Review by Willhero

This book is about a boy who lost his memory.  The queen of the gods, Hera is trapped and he must free her or all Demi-Gods will die.  I would recommend this book to anyone who liked the Percy Jackson series and people who like suspense and adventure.

The Cay by Theodore Taylor  Reviewed by Zach

cay This is a very interesting and sad book.  I cried during some parts and laughed so hard my stomach hurt at others.  I would want everyone to read this book.  It is also a great way to learn history.  It is about the start of World War 2.  A boy leaves on a boat, but there is an unexpected surprise that turns into an exciting and challenging adventure.  To find out some history and all about the adventure, read this wonderful book.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin   Reviewed by Gabe

 This book is an interesting book.  It starts out a bit confusing because you have to learn about all the different characters, and believe me, there are a lot of them!  Towards the middle, it gets more readable and the real mystery begins. I liked it because it gets pretty exciting and it is fun to try to put all the clues together to figure out who “did it”.  I would recommend this book for people who like mystery and action.  I give this book 4 ½ out of 5 stars.

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Penguin Time in the Library

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I love penguins!  They are cute… interesting…and a marvel of nature!  Did you know that there are 17 different kinds of penguins and they all live in the southern hemipshere? Our non-fiction books about penguins have lots of facts about these wonderful and unusual birds. We also have some funny books about penguins!  Helen Lester has written a very amusing series of books about Tacky, a very lovable, but different penguin.

Our first and second graders will be learning about penguins for the next few weeks. We will open this unit with Turtle’s Penguin Day by Valeri Gorbachev. After Turtle’s father reads him a bedtime story about penguins, Turtle decides he wants to be a penguin too! This book has been nominated for the Washington Children’s Choice Award.  tirt;e

Because we are learning about non-fiction books, we will also review where the penguins books are located in our library. Then we will use the computers to read about penguin facts on PebbleGo, a database for young readers.

Keep Reading!  Mrs. Hembree

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