Thoughts

Henry and Mudge Books

While I love to keep up with all of the great new books for children that are being published all the time, I also have a few older favorites. One of these older favorites are books from the Henry and Mudge series and the Annie and Snowball series. These books have sweet, timeless stories so their publishing date is not an issue. Kids still love these books. We are starting a new study of comprehension using these books. We will focus on characters, problems and solutions, lessons in a story and the different perspectives of different characters. These books make great family read alouds, too. We read these books over and over again to my own daughter. Then she read them over and over again to herself and now that she is a senior in high school, there is still a basket of these books on the top shelf of her closet. She wants to keep them to read to her own children someday. She loves when I gather these books from the public library to bring in to school for the crew because it gives her an excuse to read them yet again. I have to admit that I love them, too, and can read them over and over again myself. Be sure to check out some books in these series if you haven't already.

Love and Logic

Today, I am sharing a list of Love and Logic resources with you. We use Love and Logic at school and think it would be wonderful if parents knew more about it and could use it at home. There are so many ways to learn about Love and Logic. You can get tons of resources from the public library. You can read the Love and Logic blog. You can get weekly email tips from Love and Logic. You can watch videos on the Love and Logic Youtube channel. You can browse the Love and Logic website for charts, graphs and short articles. The speakers are usually very funny so I do like to watch the videos and listen to the audiobooks but you can learn about Love and Logic in anyway that works for you. Check out the resources below.

Love and Logic Resources at the Douglas County Public Library -   a large selection of audiobooks, DVDs, ebooks and regular books on Love and Logic topics

Love and Logic Blog


Weekly Tips from Love and Logic by Email - Enter your email in the box in the middle of the page at this link to get weekly tips delivered to your email inbox.

Getting Children to Solve Their Own Problems

 To view the video below, you will need to go directly to the crew blog. Videos do not come through in the blog emails.

Love and Logic youtube channel

Turn Your Word Into Gold
The Delayed or "Anticipatory" Consequence

All About Books

We are finished writing our All About books about our chosen animals. First we did some research to find out many interesting facts about our animals. Then we are put all of that research together in our books. Now we are sharing our books with the rest of the crew and our 6th grade buddies. Ask your child to tell you all about his or her book.

Important Dates
2/25 - 3/1 Climbing Week for our crew. We climb at 1:15 pm.
3/2 Life is Art - get your tickets here
3/8 In-Class Performances in Performing Arts 1:15 pm
3/16 - 4/1 Spring Break 

Skyping with Jax

This afternoon we were able to Skype with Jax. As you may recall, he recently left our crew when he moved to Australia. We all enjoyed seeing and chatting with each other.

Fact Strategy Dice Game

Ms. Amanda shared a game idea with me and I had to try it with the crew. The groups who tried it really liked it and it was a great way to practice some of the fact strategies that we have been learning. We will be playing this game frequently in math class. Here are the rules if you would like to play it at home with your child.

Fact Strategy Dice Game

You will need: 3 dice

Rules for playing: Players take turns rolling the three dice and finding the total number of dots represented. Encourage players to try and make a ten or find doubles facts for any other strategy to help add the numbers easily and quickly. You could keep score by giving a point to the player with the highest total on each round but it isn't necessary.

Example: Player 1 rolls a 3, a 4 and a 6. They should mentally group the 4 and 6 to make a ten and then add the 3 to the ten for a total of 13.

Player 2 rolls a 6, a 2 and a 6. They could mentally add the 6 and 6 - a doubles fact - to get a 12 and then add the 2 to the 12 for a total of 14.

After playing the game, the crew thought that it would be fun to add more dice as you got better at adding. You could also just use 2 dice for students who need to work with smaller numbers.

Love of Reading

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

  --  Mark Twain


That quote is my reading philosophy in a nutshell. My biggest goal for our crew is that they develop a love for reading and have books and authors that they love. Of course, I want them to be proficient readers, too, but if they are proficient and never actually read then what is the point. If they learn to love reading, then they will put in the time and effort to become good at it. So while I teach reading strategies, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, decoding and phonics, I also be share lots and lots of great books with the crew to get them excited about reading.

Below are some photos of us "cleaning and sorting" our book bins by series. Just between us, the bins didn't really need to be cleaned but doing this allows the crew to see all of the great books that we have and that they have missed when they are looking for good books to read.



How Can You Help at Home?
1. Read to your child every day. Yes, even after they can read for themselves. Here is a link to a great article about a dad who read to his daughter every day until she went off to college:
Father-Daughter Reading Streak Lasts Nearly 9 Years

2. Share what you are reading with your child - books, magazines, cookbooks, instruction manuals, blogs, websites, street signs, newspapers, news sites online, etc.

3. Use different voices for different characters to make reading aloud more fun.

4. Have your child read to you.

5. Go to the public library - often.

6. Visit bookstores.

7. Have piles of books all around your home.

8. Enjoy the time you spend reading with your child.

9. Check out this link: Guerrilla Tactics to Get Your Child to Love Reading

10. Looking for some great new-ish books: The 2018 Nerdy Book Club Award Winners 

And the glorious result of all of that sorting and "cleaning" is below: