On Thursday, children were busy stacking Oreos to learn about the averages and how to work cooperatively with each other.  Check out the photos.

After lots of hard work the final global peace movie is released along with a global peace movie website. http://globalpeacemovie.weebly.com/  We had over sixteen countries represented and 25 school participating.  We will continue to work on promoting peace. Enjoy the movie.

Our monarch butterflies finally have emerged after two weeks in their chrysalis.  We had over twenty butterflies.  All the butterflies were tagged and released. Hopefully they will find their way down to Mexico.

Our classroom organized a global peace movie project. We asked schools around the globe to submit to our school a 30 sec video that contains a message of peace.  On Friday, students completed their 30 sec movie on peace.  Stay tuned as we will shortly be posting the final movie from this project.  It will  contain movies from all the schools that participated.  

The monarch caterpillars that we began the school year with have enter the second stage of their life cycle.  All the remaining caterpillars have formed their chrysalis.  The students captured the monarch caterpillar creating its caterpillars. Check out the video below.

Our first week of school was only three days long but these 14 fourth graders managed to squeak in many memorable moments. Check out the photos.

Yesterday,  our first fourth graders arrived.  All 31 one of them had a safe journey and are settling into their bed of milkweed.   Many of them already nibbling away and making the milkweed leaves look like Swiss cheese.  Some are less than an inch long while other a bigger.  These monarch caterpillars can't wait for your arrival. Look at the photos below.  

This has been an amazing summer for me both professionally and personally.  Professionally I have participates in three great learning experiences about movie making, writing, and learning.  These learning experiencing have sparked new ideas for fourth grade and some changes.  Personally,  I have been on many wonderful adventures with my family from hiking to visiting family.  Recently I returned from a family adventure to Wells, Maine where we took Ethan to the beach for the first time.  Watching his tiny feet touch the sand for the first time and see his pure expressions of happiness was very powerful. Below is a quick snapshot of this experience but this photo couldn't truly capture the joy of discovery Ethan's had and his parent experiencing this with him.  I find this picture a good symbol of what I would like each of my students to experience this school year in fourth grade; pure happiness and a joy for learning.  What memorable experience have you had this year?  Post a comment and share them.