Patriot Day

It's so hard to discuss Patriot Day with kiddos that weren't alive even during the events of September 11. However, we watched a kid-friendly video that explained that Patriot Day is about one country coming together to help those in need and to celebrate our nation. Then, we made 5-point stars and hung them around the room! (I tweeted some pics but will post more on Facebook later.) Did you know that George Washington's original plan for the US flag had 6-point stars because those are easier to make but Betsy Ross showed him how to fold and cut to make 5-point stars and now there are 5-point stars on the flag! We also had a school community meeting this morning to discuss Patriot Day as well as our school focus of "Press Pause" and "Get your mind right!"

In the classroom, students are working on a semi-assigned morning choice this week. They filled out a survey on google forms with their preference and then I placed them based on their choices. After all of the out-of-the-ordinaries this morning, we also read, We're All Wonders, by RJ Palacio-a children's book about accepting differences. We introduced our kindness jar which will be filled with marbles-1 per act of kindness that is witnessed by me or each other. In Wonder, we continued reading from Summer's point of view and Auggie told Summer about what he overheard Jack say and although she promised Auggie she wouldn't tell, she did give Jack a hint. We had a few minutes to read independently, visit the library or continue writing our letters to Ian. Oh, and we earned our final potato head piece after Music! Now we need to decide on a celebration... After lunch and recess, we had quiet time to settle and prepare for the afternoon and then switched things up with our schedule for Science and then Math Workshop. In Science, we drew pictures of scientists doing science. The majority of the pictures were men, resembling Albert Einstein, in a lab coat blowing something up. We discussed how we are ALL scientists! In Math, we split up as usual and some were working with Ms. Hanlin, some worked on the 1.2 pre-test (addition and subtraction with regrouping), some learned addition and subtraction with regrouping with me, some started an independent project with roman numerals and everyone practiced addition and subtraction at some point.