Attitude

Our character education word for the month of January is ATTITUDE. The definition of attitude is: To be positive when dealing with others, to believe in yourself, and to approach challenges with optimism.  Please read the story and quotes below and leave a comment about what having a good attitude means to you, and any advice you may have for your classmates about keeping a positive attitude. Make sure you use complete sentences in your blog response and include your capitalized name.

The House of 1,000 Mirrors

Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1,000 Mirrors. One inhabitant of this village was a happy little dog, and when he learned of this house, he decided to visit. When he arrived, the little dog bounced happily up the stairs to the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1,000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1,000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the house, he thought to himself, "This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often."

In the same village, another little dog, who was not as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1,000  friendly
looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1,000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, "This is a horrible place. I will never come back here  in."

All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the people you meet?

Adapted from Japanese folktale

"I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.” Martha Washington, Presidential First Lady (1732-1802)

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.” Helen Keller, memoirist and lecturer (1880-1968)

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein, scientist and philosopher (1875-1955)

Always give people a chance
Today is the start of a new day
Think with a positive outlook
In every problem there is a solution
That which hurts us only makes us stronger
Understand there is dark, but focus on the light
Don’t think you can’t, but know you can
Each day’s success is determined by our mindset

Attitude is…Making a conscious choice every day about how you will embrace life.
Understanding how you look at the outside world is determined by how you feel on the inside.

Kids Against Hunger

During your time at school, you will participate in many community service projects. One hope of our school is that this will encourage you to continue serving our community throughout your life. One of our classmates did just that a couple of weeks ago. Here is the link to the news story and video showing Blake packing boxes of food to send to children in Haiti.

Blake's effort inspired me to call Kids Against Hunger, and we will be going there as a class to volunteer in February! All of the food we box will be sent to kids in Haiti.

This week, I would like for you to leave a comment answering at least two of the following questions. Please use complete sentences, proper capitalization and punctuation.

1. What community service have you done outside of what we do at school?
2. What other community service ideas do you have for our class?
3. Why is community service important?

I will have more information about our community service project in the class newsletter. I hope you have a great weekend!

Mrs. Garrett

How Do You Spell That?

Hello students!

As we have discussed in class, on January 27th we will have a spelling bee in our class. I do not want you to feel stressed or worried. This is just for fun and to practice what we have learned so far this year. Some of the words will be former spelling words and others will be from the practice lists I sent home yesterday. Your task for the week is to practice at this link. You should post by the end of the week and tell us what some of the trickier words were that you encountered. You are welcome to try at a harder grade level as long as you continue to spell most of the words correctly. If you find any other fun spelling games online, feel free to add the links to your post so we can try those too.

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Garrett

Simple Machines

Check out the following activities that go with this week's Discovery Center visit and post which two links you visited along with something you learned.

Invention Playhouse: Tinker Ball - In this interactive, you will use an assortment of objects and simple machines to create a path for a ball to move around the screen and reach its goal. You'll learn about pushing materials to their limits and problem solving Simple Machines: A WebQuest - In this WebQuest, you will explore the different kinds of simple machines, locate examples of each simple machine in the real world, demonstrate basic relationships between force and motion, use vocabulary words related to this topic to answer and ask questions, identify inventors that have used simple machines to contribute to our society, calculate work and power, and use simple machines to solve a problem. Edheads Simple Machines – Look around the house and barn to find simple machines. Identify what these items are used for and how they work to achieve the high score! COSI Simple Machines - Learn about simple machines and the forces that make them work by exploring this online activity. Have a great weekend! Mrs. Garrett

Louis Sachar Author Study

This month's author study is on Louis Sachar. He has written almost two dozen books and has won many writing awards including the National Book Award and the Newberry Medal for Holes. Each of you have already chosen a book by Louis Sachar and this week's blog assignment is to post which book you are reading and your idea for your book project. You have until January 8th to post your idea, and we will be sharing our book projects on January 22nd, so now is the time to start thinking about your project!

Mrs. Garrett