Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Today is Conor’s 7th birthday. We celebrated by singing Happy Birthday. Then he blew out the imaginary candles, and finally we had “7” donuts and apple juice. Conor got to say, “Bon appetite, you may eat.” This morning Ms. Stern told us that she received an e-mail from the author of Heartprints, P.K. Hallinan. She was SO surprised! Ms. Stern couldn’t figure out how Mr. Hallinan knew that we had read his book or that we are working on leaving heartprints behind in class. She e-mailed him back and asked that very question. Mr. Hallinan explained that his computer let him know when we wrote about him on our blog yesterday. Jackie figured out that it probably means that he’ll be reading this blog entry too. (Hi Mr. Hallinan!) How cool! So far, we have left 25 heartprints.

During independent reading everyone was focused. People are getting much better at staying on task and reading very quietly to themselves.

At P.E., we used the long jump rope. It is the long one called “Sammy the Snake.” Coach Hudson and Coach Steingasser were moving it on the floor. Then, they made it harder by having the jump rope come off the floor. At the end, children had a turn to jump into the jump rope while the two classes sang along. We sang, “Strawberry shortcake, cream on top, tell me the name of your sweetheart. Is it a…b…c…d…” Madison S. made it though the whole alphabet until she landed on C during the second time. Coach Hudson said he likes it when our hearts beat fast!

After lunch, Ms. Stern read a story called My First Chinese New Year. We made a Venn diagram showing how our New Year on December 31st is alike and different from the Chinese New Year. We also read Time for Kids. It was all about Patricia Polacco. We have read many of her books in our class. By reading the TFK, we discovered some other books that we haven’t read yet, such as Emma Kate, Oh, Look!, and Rotten Richie and the Ultimate Dare.