What's Your Story?

March 29, 2012
by Mrs. Hembree
9 Comments

Phyllis Travels North

The Stories Around the World Blog are hosting a World Book Tour!

First Phyllis started in San Antonio, Texas and visited Mrs. Kistler and the 49′ers. Then she came to Washington state to visit the Bulldog Readers!

 Here’s what Phyllis looks like!

 Our second graders read about Phyllis and how she tried to warn her friends that a snow storm was coming. However, since it was on April Fool’s Day, nobody believed her! You will have to read the book to find out what happens!

 After we finished reading the story we talked about our favorite parts.

“My favorite part was when Phyllis was trying to tell everyone about the blizzard!” ~~Isabella

“My favorite part was when Phyllis throws maple candy in the air!” ~~Marcus

“My favorite part was when it was snowing on April Fools!” ~~Eric

One thing we all agreed on was that nobody (except Mrs. Hembree) has seen maple sap buckets or lines hooked up to maple trees. The only way we know maple syrup is by finding it in a jar or jug!

Mrs. Hembree told us how when she was a little girl in Massachusetts, she and her grandmother used to take walks into the woods in the late winter. People tapped the maple trees and sap dripped into buckets hanging under the hole.

Then the sap was gathered up and brought to a large pot where it boiled and became syrup. The children had dishes or cones filled with snow and then had the hot syrup poured over the snow. Yummy! Yummy!

Photo by Erin Zimmer of www.seriouseats.com at Harlow’s Sugar House, Putney, Vermont 2008.
Now Phyllis is off to Canada to visit Mrs. Watson’s class!

We hope Phyllis will get there in time for April Fool’s Day! We had a great visit with Phyllis here in Seattle. We hope she has a wonderful world tour.

Have fun  in Canada, Phyllis!

***********

Have you ever had maple syrup on snow or ice cream before?

What is the best April Fool’s trick you ever played on someone?

 

March 27, 2012
by ikistl
4 Comments

Phyllis in Texas!

The Stories Around the World Blog are hosting a World Book Tour!

April Fool, Phyllis is on a world tour! Who is Phyllis? She’s a groundhog related to Punxatawney Phil. Phil predicts the weather and so does Phyllis!

Author Susanna Hill invited our group blog to send April Fool, Phyllis around the world. Of course, we said, “Yes!”

Her first stop was San Antonio, Texas with the 49′ers.

Phyllis enjoys recess with the 49'ers. It was in the high 80's and sunny!
Phyllis enjoys recess with the 49′ers. It was in the high 80′s and sunny!
Snowflake Jackson loved reading April Fool, Phyllis with the 49'ers.
Snowflake Jackson loved reading April Fool, Phyllis with the 49′ers.
Who said it never snows in Texas?!
Who said it never snows in Texas?!

She did get hungry, so we gave her Texas sweet treats. She enjoyed Bluebell Ice Cream and some Texas honey.
She did get hungry, so we gave her Texas sweet treats. She enjoyed Bluebell Ice Cream and some Texas honey.
Time to give Phyllis a good bye bear hug!
Time to give Phyllis a good bye bear hug!
Off you go to Mrs. Hembree and the Bulldog Readers in Washington State, USA!
Off you go to Mrs. Hembree and the Bulldog Readers in Washington State, USA!


When it was time to say good bye, Phyllis boarded Google Earth for her flight to Washington. Farewell, Phyllis!

 How do you celebrate April Fool’s Day in your state or country?

Do you have an idea for a harmless April Fool’s Day trick?

February 13, 2012
by John Miller
0 comments

World Education Games

The Treasure Seekers are signed up for the World Education Games and have been practicing like crazy. We’ve enrolled ourselves into all three challenges: spelling, math, and science. If you are not familiar with the challenge, students compete with other kids around the world and within their age group to see how many questions they can get correct. There are five levels with 10, one-minute competitions at each level. Teachers can track class and individual progress. The Spelling Games take place first, on March 6th, followed by math on March 7th, and science on March 8th. Once students are signed-up, they can “practice” all they want to online. ;-)

February 11, 2012
by dweldridge
1 Comment

Soapbox Chatback One

Hi everyone, we wanted to answer a range of questions we’ve been asked about our programme called Soapbox. We had a little time on Friday afternoon, so we jumped in front of the cameras and made a little feature called Chatback. We thought you might like hearing how we really sound. Accents from all the different countries always rest happily on our ears and we know we sound quite different from say people that come from London. Perhaps you might like to share your accents too?

February 11, 2012
by R3
1 Comment

Time Capsule

Today 3D finished our time capsule and buried it in the school grounds. In our time capsule were some letters we wrote to ourselves and other little goodies. We are going to dig it up on the last day of school!

January 27, 2012
by kwebbscheers
9 Comments

Family Technology Night in 4WS

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4WS LOVE using technology in our classroom. We enjoy posting on our blog, visiting our blogging buddies, skyping, using digital cameras,and MUCH MORE! We love using technology so much, that we thought we should show our family members how to do some of the things we have been learning about in our class.

4Ws is proud to pronounce THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2o12 as our first ever         FAMILY TECHNOLOGY NIGHT! 

To prepare for this event, each of the students wrote personal invitations (letters) to family members asking them to be apart of  this special evening. Each child explained what was going to happen during the evening and why he or she  thought the family member would enjoy joining us.

To kick off the evening, we will be skyping into our classroom Miss Kelly Moore of the Techie Kids blog. She will share what she likes the most about blogging and some of the benefits it creates for students and their families. Next, Mrs.Webb-Scheers will share with the group how to leave a comment on our blog and she will give everyone our commenting tips sheet. From there, the students will work with their special family member to leave a comment on our blog. To finish, the students will teach their family member how to use/make their favorite techie thing….Wordles, QR Codes, Photostory, or maybe aVoki. It should be a wonderful evening full of sharing and learning. 

Here are a few pics of the invitations we made…

   

Please take a look inside your child’s Communication Folder for the Family Technology Night flyer and the personal invitation your child made. We are really looking forward to sharing our learning with you.

See you all in the 4WS classroom on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 6:30pm.

We are going to have a GREAT TIME!

Have you ever had a Family Technology Night with your class? If so, what did you do?

Are you planning on attending our special night? If so, what is one thing you want to learn?

January 21, 2012
by dweldridge
9 Comments

Soapbox Episode One (Hawes, England).

I’ve been wrestling with Edublogs, but I think I have moved a step forwards! here is the first in a series of programmes that my year sixes have made, mainly during break times. We based it on the great work of Russell St School NZ. We hope our programmes will reflect what goes on locally, so you will get to appreciate our local stories. Episode two should be made within the next three weeks. As the series goes on the idea is that the technical glitches get ironed out. The children move into doing all the editing; big ideas, but a lot of work. We know there arefault, butwe hope it gives you a flavour of who we are.

Mr E

December 5, 2011
by kwebbscheers
6 Comments

4WS & Pablo Picasso

Note: This post was written by the students of 4WS. Great job boys and girls. I am very proud of you!

WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT PICASSO (written by Christian, Nathaniel, Rachel, Colin, Destiny, Nathan, Maci, Jesse, Chancen, Brandon, Zac, & Thomas)

Picasso was born inMalago, Spain on October 25, 1881 and he died in Mougins, France on April 8, 1973,

He had different art periods:

BLUE PERIOD

  • This was a time when his friend died and he was sad. All of his paintings was blue at that point. BUT, they were all still really good.

ROSE PERIOD

  • This was a time when he met a girl and fell in love.

When he was little, his first words were “Piz, piz”. 

CUBISM PERIOD

  • This is a time when he changed things us and made the pictures look all differnt and stuff. Noses and eyes where they shouldn’t be and stuff.

HOW WE MADE OUR MONSTERS  (Written by McKenna, Austin H., Austin R., Barrett & Chloe)

Suplise  Needed:

  1. Colored paper
  2. Black markers
  3. yarn
  4. glue
  5. pom poms
  6. glitter glue
  7. colored tape
  8. face template
  9. Plain white paper

First we picked our heads for the monsters from the templates that Mrs. Webb-Scheers gave us. Next, we traced our head on 2 pieces of contruction paper. Then we drew a forhead on the head, a BIG nose and a chin on one piece. Then we cut the head out and kept the part with the nose on it. Then we glued it onto the other head template. Next we glued the whole face on a piece of colored paper. It was the background. We glued another piece of the same color onto it to make it a long background (2 pieces high).

After that, we made a football shape and a oval for the eyes and cut them out and glued them on our monsters. Then we made puples for the eyes and glued them on. After, we cut red circles out for the cheeks and glued them onto the head. Then we took a piece of pink and a piece of black paper and cut out a funny shaped mouth. The pink part are the monsters lips. Next, we used little square pieces of white paper and glued them on the mouth for teeth.

Then we decorated the background using a bunch of things (glitter glue, colored tape, year, hats). This made the monsters look really cool.

UNIT REFLECTION (Cole, Ceara, Isaiah, Meghan, Robert & Cameron)

Things we would change to make it better:

  1. Make no cheeks
  2. Don’t use so big of pieces of paper. Put it on a big piece of paper, then cut it back a bit, but leave enough room to decorate. 
  3. Have more shapes to choose from for the heads.

Things we would keep the same:

  1. How the eyes point in different directions. It makes it look cooler.
  2. Decorated background because it makes it look way more detailed.
  3. How we decorated/made clothes on the monster because it makes it look very detailed and cool.

 Take a look at the video below to watch a few of the students making thier monsters…

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Have you ever learned about Piscasso before in your Art class? If so, what did you find most interesting?

What do you learn about and/or do during your Art classes?

December 3, 2011
by Mrs. Hembree
3 Comments

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring!

Seattle is known for a lot of things. Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Expedia, Starbucks – these are all famous Seattle based companies! They put us on the map for business.

Some rights reserved by dherrera_96

However, Seattle is also known for something else….RAIN!  The funny thing is Seattle doesn’t have the most rain in the US, people just think we do! Compared to other US cities, Seattle ranks 44th in average rainfall per year. That’s pretty far down the list.

So why do we have the reputation for rain? Because in an average year, we have around 150 days of rain! Then there are the cloudy days and the partly cloudy days.  When you add everything up, we average only about 60 days of sunshine a year!

What do we do for recess when it’s raining? We go outside! Just like the students in Alaska that stay outside at recess even when it’s really cold, we go outside when it’s raining.   The only time we stay inside for recess is when we have a hard downpour like in the picture above. Those are the days when we get huge puddles and it’s coming down too hard to stay somewhat dry.

Those are the days when the rivers flood and the national news show pictures of salmon swimming in the streets because the rivers have crossed over the banks! It happens….really!

Does it rain a lot where you live?

Do you get a lot of sunshine?

Have you ever seen an animal where it shouldn’t be because of weather?