Reading Month Tradition Continued

What do you think of the Black Lagoon stories by Mike Thaler? We have heard the stories from the class, the teacher, the art teacher, the music teacher, the new kid, and today, the custodian. Still to come, we have the nurse, the secretary, the cafeteria lady, the librarian, substitute teacher, the bully, and the principal. It's it great that these people in our school will take time out of their day to read these stories to us? I think it makes our Reading Month tradition very special. Remember to thank them. Now go sit down with a nice, cozy blanket and a good book! Enjoy!

Winter Stories to Warm Readers

I have truly enjoyed reading the winter stories written in the last week. Your snowball fights, snowangels, and snowmen took me back to my childhood. Sitting by the cozy fire with a snuggly blanket and frothy cup of hot cocoa made me yearn for a good book. Thanks for making me feel like I was there as I read your stories. Keep it up with your next stories. Remember the excitement for your readers is in the details you share. Make our mouths water, our hearts pitter-patter, and our ears hear the songs that you hear. What will your next story be about?

Reading Month

I am thrilled that Sheriff Stolle kicked off "Reading Month" for us this year. It was nice of him to make us his first official duty as the new Virginia Beach Sheriff. Did you like the story about the wolf learning to read? It is one of my favorites. Sherman Crunch was a pretty cool story, too.

Exciting Times

Welcome to 2010! I hope you have all had a great winter break. I have enjoyed spending time with my family and friends, eating delicious treats, and reading a book about being "gorgeously green". I was tickled to find that my daughter, Heather, wrapped my presents in brown paper bags with paper ribbons. One of the things she gave me was a basket made with rolled up newspaper. I will bring it to school to show you, but this is a picture of it. It is the neatest thing...and an example of creatively reusing resources. So what have you been up to during the break?

Big Blue Can

Finally, I have a big blue recycle can in Chesapeake at my house. It felt like Christmas this morning when I saw them deliver my recycle can. I took out my 3 little blue tubs and dumped them into my big blue can. I then added some cardboard boxes which I have not been able to do before for Tuesday pick-up. Now I can see that we are recycling more than we are sending to the dump. Yeah!

Holidays Around the World

I have had a blast with our holiday destinations around the world. How about you? My favorite has to be Germany because I love gingerbread cookies. But the yule logs of France are a close second. It sure was fun adding Sweden to our passports this year, too. I am glad we made that decision. Besides the food, I must say listening to the music and exploring the symbols of each of the tradions was exciting. Piera's mom joining us for our Hanukkah studies was certainly a treat too. I loved Piera's menorah. What was your favorite part?

December is Here!

Yeah! I'm glad to hear that you all had wonderful Thanksgivings. It sounded like you all enjoyed spending time with family and friends. It was awesome to hear how much you are looking forward to the winter holidays so that you can spend more time with friends and family. Close knit relationships make everything much better. I feel like we are our own little community in room 104. I love spending time with you every day and watching you grow and blossom into super citizens who care about what you do and each other. Remember KINDNESS is the citizenship characteristic I will be looking for this month. Who do you think I should pick?