Happy Halloween!

For online Halloween fun, a few websites just for you!

Trick or Treat: Find the shortest routes that will visit all houses and still get you back home before the pumpkin!

Pumpkin carving: Click and drag the mouse to carve the pumpkin.

Make a pumpkin: Click and drag to add features to the pumpkin.

Skeleton Dance: Complete the puzzle to make the skeletons dance!

Halloween with Boowa and Kwala: Puzzles, games, crafts, and singing ghosts!

Online Halloween Games from Ben & Jerry, the ice cream guys!

The Typing of the Ghosts: Ghosts disappear when you type the words on them. Keep your fingers on the home row keys!

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

Fourth Grade Slide Shows

Fourth graders have been busy reviewing and choosing pictures taken at last month's NH River Day. Students uploaded photographs to the education section of Animoto, then chose appropriate music from freeplaymusic.com to accompany the visuals. These slide shows will be embedded in students' blogs and a copy will be stored in each student's digital portfolio here at school. Here's an example of one student's fabulous slideshow!

Ladybug Book #6: THe Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes To School

The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School is a funny story about a girl whose hair has a mind of its own! You should see what her hair can do and how it can help her - or get her into trouble!
Here are some connections second graders made to this book:

text to self: Sophie and Jace's hair can go wild when they shake it.
text to text: Autumn thought the story was like Rapunzel since both girls had such long, helpful hair!
text to world: Jack noticed the red spot on Jupiter in the illustrations!

Ladybug Book #5: The Circus Ship

The Circus Ship is written and illustrated by Chris Van Dusen, an author/illustrator from Maine. First and second graders really liked the book - here are some of their thoughts:

This is a wonderful book with beautiful and magical illustrations.
I loved all the animals and how they hid from the mean circus boss.
It was definitely funny when the animals were camouflaged.
Mr. Paine wasn't very observant if he couldn't find them!
When the tiger saved Emma Rose, I had a text-to-world connection to the job of a firefighter.
The book had a lot of good rhymes.
I like that it was based on a true story! I liked the animals' happy ending. 

Ladybug Awards Nominee #4

This book, Creaky Old House by Linda Ashman, is interesting and funny. The story takes place in a big, old house that the big family is glad to live in. But the front doorknob breaks and they become frustrated because they can't fix it! In the end, they're happy again because it does gets fixed in a brilliant way! We liked this book because it's funny, it has a happy ending, and because it rhymes.

Ladybug Nominee #3

This Ladybug Award nominated book is called Birds by Kevin Henkes. Second grade listened to the story and made these connections to the text:

Text-to-self connection: Shyann saw at least thirty turkeys and some bluejays.

Text-to-text conection: At home, Sophie has a bird book with many more kinds of birds. Autumn connects this book to Those Darn Squirrels because both squirrels and birds live in trees and because the squirrels were eating bird seed from the backyard feeders.

Text-to-world connection: The imaginative part about birds, when they flew, leaving marks all over the sky reminded us of jets leaving condensation trails (contrails) as they fly across the sky!

We wonder how author Kevin Henkes pronounces his last name. Garrett suggested we try to Skype him to ask - but we couldn't find his Skype address. :-(

Pumpkins!

An anonymous Danbury couple has given a wonderful gift the DES community. At our monthly assembly on Tuesday, Mrs. Lane presented each child with a copy of Mary Lyn Ray's book, Pumpkins, autographed by the local author. Ms. Ray thoughtfully personalized each book with the child's name. Staff members, too, received personalized copies of the popular book. The children were all so excited to have the book of such a famous and well-loved author! Speaking as a staff member, I was touched to be included in such a wonderful, generous event. Thank you to Mary Lyn Ray for bringing such joy to the children of DES. And special thanks to our anonymous benefactors who truly understand the importance of literacy and the wonder of books.