Sunday, January 9, 2011

Back to school....

I know a lot of you have already gone back but tomorrow is our first day back from Christmas/New Year Vacation--yes we were spoiled!! So spoiled that I am a bit nervous to get back...yikes!! I actually think it is more of the excite nervous. I have re-arranged my room, made new class schedules, created a different work plan for the grade levels, and have a fool-proof (ya right) seating chart!!!

We recently finished reading Number the Stars, which was an eye-opener to some of my kiddos. We learned a lot about differences and how to be accepting of other even if they are really different. One of the teacher at my school is Jewish and she came and spoke to the kids which really made them realize that even if we look the same we also have a lot of differences and that is o.k. and kind of neat. We can learn from each other! When we go back, I am going to show them the movie Paperclips. If you have not seen it, it is really touching. Basically, it is about a group of students who decided to collect 6 million paperclips to represent the approximate number of Jews who lost their lives during WWII. At their last count, they were at 30 million paperclips!

I am also on a search for great, FREE character building programs. If you know of a fantastic one, please share. My most favorite was from the Tiger Woods Foundation...not so great for character building now :-/ Please leave a comment on any programs that you loved or hated. I would appreciate a program that has writing activities and/or a book that supports it. I would also be really interested to see if any of you know of a program that is based around a sports team or sports "hero". THANKS!!

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