US Elections 2012

Making sense of the electoral process can be overwhelming for children, but even the youngest child will understand the process of voting. All children want to feel they are being heard, and an election is the perfect time to discuss the voter's right to have his/her say. 

There are a range of election topics that you can discuss with your child, from fairness to the electoral college. 

And if you want to start an interesting family discussion, ask the question, "what would you do if you were President?" 

Here are some links for child-friendly election information. 

Scholastic Magazine - Election 2012

Time For Kids - Election 2012

Ben's Guide to US Government for Kids

And for tips about talking to children about elections, check out these parent links:

'Talking to Kids About Elections' - from Highlights Parents

Election 2012: Answering Kids Questions

The Race is On! A Parent's Guide to Talking About the Presidential Election

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a restful and/or exciting October break!

With Halloween just around the corner, here are a few links for some games and activities with a spooky theme!

PBS Kids Halloween

It's Halloween is an interactive Halloween story complete with audio and music.

Pumpkin Dress-UP

Pumpkin Patch Match 

 Ghost Blasters is a fun math game for students who need to work on multiples. 

Garfield's Scavenger Hunt

This Pumpkin Patch is great for counting and sorting different kinds and colors of pumpkins.

Candy Corn Math - a memory style addition game

Boo - like that old Simon game, click on the monsters in the right order.  

Whack A Monster 

Halloween Pumpkins  - a fast-paced matching game

Funschool Halloween

LS Internet Safety Seminar

Many thanks to everyone who attended the seminar this morning, and to PIRC for sponsoring the event. I think we touched upon some really important topics, and I hope that you found it informative and thought provoking. 
Thank you to Erin Bagley for her expertise and input as well (and that dizzyingly amazing slide show!)
All the resources and links that we spoke about can be found under the 'Internet Safety' link above. 
Please contact either Erin or myself if you have any questions or concerns. 

This Week in the Lab

I can’t believe it’s October! Autumn is officially here. 

We had another busy week in the lab last week and the students have done some amazing things. In the lower grades, we’re concentrating more on having students practice a curriculum skill while learning to control the mouse. In the upper grades, students are beginning to create documents, so we’ve spent some time on saving and naming documents. 

Last week, Pre-K used the website Starfall to learn more about shapes. They worked on a variety of skills, including matching 2D shapes to real life examples, i.e. matching a rectangle to a book cover. They also sorted shapes by the number of sides and color. They also used various shapes to make pictures. The children are really improving in their mouse abilities. Dragging and dropping  and double clicking are tough skills for little hands, but they’re all making great progress! This week, they did a Sesame Street activity about going to school and all the mixed feelings that it can bring on!

Kindergarten also did some work with shape and mouse skills. They worked on a website called abcya.com, where they dragged and dropped shapes to form pictures. They also worked on scrolling a webpage, understanding that sometimes you cannot see the entire web page on your screen at any one time. They worked on scrolling to move the page around so that different parts of it appear on the screen. This week they’re working on the alphabet using the PBS website. There are some great videos, games, and activities, including sections on Sesame Street, Curious George, The Cat in the Hat, and more! They also have a great parent site at www.pbs.org/parents.

First grade continued their work with opposites. This week they inserted their images into a document, then resized and repositioned them. They also added text boxes and speech bubbles. I’m very impressed with what they have achieved so far. In a very short time, they’ve covered lots of IT skills, from manipulating images and text, to saving and naming their documents. This week they’ll put on the finishing touches, formatting the text and adding colors.

Second grade also continued their Westward Expansion research from last week and have started creating a fact sheet about their topic. They’ve also created text boxes, then resized and repositioned them within their documents.

Third grade also continued their Viking research last week and created a fact sheet using text boxes. This week, as they finish with their facts, they will insert images to make the document more visually appealing. Then they will personalize their work by adding colors, fonts, and borders.

The fourth graders continued their virtual trip around the world last week and will be finishing up their travels this week. They used Google Earth to great success to map out their trip, find the coordinates of the places they’ll visit, then calculate the distance travelled. As they are working with partners, it’s been very interesting to see how they cooperate and communicate to form a strategy to get around the world in the shortest distance. It’s also been a great geography lesson!

Have a great week!

Mrs. Elliott