I hope you had a wonderful spring holiday with your family. From the stories told in the classroom, there were some ups and down, but mostly exciting ups. I’m glad. Thank you for fitting in a visit to Wonder 
World. We knew having it come right after vacation was tricky – thank you to all who were able to attend. Spring is a super busy and active time. I’m sure you are racing to meetings, practices and recitals in a thousand different directions.
Wonder World
The class was buzzing with excitement and pride as they prepared for the museum on Monday. We had many parents and visitors come during the day and many families come at night. Thank you for walking through the displays and talking to the children about what they’d learned and what they found most interesting. The children spent a lot of time discovering new things about places around the world. An awesome part of this project is that now, 
each of the students will be more keyed into their country and the countries of their classmates. They’ll keep learning about them and will gain even more understanding about our world.
Many of the children (over half as I type this on Wednesday) have completed a blog post summarizing their global geography project. They’d love to hear from you if you have time to read them. It surprised me to read more and different facts on these blogs than I had read on their display boards. How cool it that! If you have the chance to read the blog, leave a comment to let the children know what you learned from each part of the project, and what you noticed about the growing research and writing skills.
The State Parade Project
This week we read about each region in our country and looked at lots of different books about the states. The children selected their top four states and tried to write a compelling reason as to why they should be the person to learn about their top choice. We talked about dealing with disappointment because only one 3rdgrader can research a state. It is going to be tricky. Please help your child understand, that all states have amazing wonders – places, people, historic sites, festivals and exciting tourist spots. Once they begin discovering, even a fifth choice will feel exciting.
Ms. Coronato and I will meet on Friday so students know their state on Monday. You will be receiving information about the project, as much of the building is done at home. We’ll do the research and the writing in the classroom. The students, with your help (thank you very much) will create floats of represent their chosen wonders. On Monday we will look at examples of floats from past years. I have posted some examples for you to see on a blog post announcing the project and posting the size criteria in case that gets lost in the shuffle. You can get to those post here and here – they were posted on April 28.
The Parade of the States will be Thursday, May 23. The children will need to arrive at 4:45. The event is likely to last an hour to an hour and a half. Thank you for marking the date on your calendars.
Bits and Pieces –
This week we welcomed Ryan Harrington to our classroom. He has joined us from South Hampton. We are glad to have him with us.- We’ve continued our work with fractions. It seems as though most of the children understand the concept of numerator and denominator.
- We’re in the thick of the action in our chapter read aloud, The Green Ember. We’re trying to figure out just who Smalls is and why he is so important to Uncle Wilfred – even more important to protect than family.
We’ve been sharing books that help us think about friendship and friendliness. We’re learning the steps of the Open Circle Problem Solving process to try to break from our habit of blaming first. It’s tricky.