This week we are sharing a biography about an interesting individual, Snowflake Bentley, that loved snow so much that he photographed it.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

click to go to snowcrystals.com

click to watch snowflake movie

                             

How do you Celebrate?

Traditions

One of my favorite traditions growing up was making gingerbread houses. My children are older now and aren't that interested in having gingerbread houses, but I decided we could still make one and donate it to the festival of trees. This is the one we made to donate this year. Traditions sometimes come and go, but the memories we have from our traditions will stay with us forever.

I also loved laying on the floor by our fireplace and listening to the record of "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen. It is a sad story and I don't know exactly why I loved listening to it so much. I think because it was a "tradition"and I had a personal connection with the story. 

Children's Vinyl Record Series

I hope you have traditions that you look forward to, 

things that bring you joy and help you to create memories.

What are you thankful for?

Mayflower History

Special Badges...

Did you know that you can now earn special badges on RTS for logging your minutes read on specific days? Here are a couple badges that you can earn for logging reading time on Halloween and/or November 2nd, for American Indian Heritage Month.

Some other days you can earn special badges in the coming months are
November
5- Donut Day
12- Chicken Soup for the Soul Day
14- Pickle Day
27- Thanksgiving
28- Hanukkah
December
3- Cookie Day
7- Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
17- Wright Brothers Day
24- Christmas Eve
25- Christmas
29- Chocolate Day

Keep reading and logging your minutes on Road to Success.

Wishing you a "magical" Halloween!

We Give Books

http://www.wegivebooks.org is a website that offers free online digital books to read.

I thought you might like this spooky parody of "Goodnight Moon," "Goodnight Goon." 

Click on the picture above to go to this book on the "We Give Books" site.

5 little bats

5 little bats sitting on the floor

1 flew away and then there were 4

4 little bats sitting in a tree

1 flew away and then there were 3

3 little bats tasting witches brew

1 flew away and then there were 2

2 little bats just having fun

1 flew away and then there was 1

1 little bat who likes to pretend

Won’t fly away because he is your friend

Our first Road to Success assembly of the school year will be October 27th.

2 students will win certificates for 
a bike, or scooter or iPod Shuffle.

We will also have many other rockin' prizes to give away… 
bamboo flutes, 
rockin' rubber duckies,  
rock & mineral collections, 
and newly designed "rockin' reader" t-shirts.

Be a ROCKIN' READER and win a prize!

Keep Reading, and Keep Voting...

We are over 90% of our goal to read one million minutes at Orchard Elementary!

Don't forget to vote for what you would like Mrs. Morley to do when we reach our goal.

The reward with the most votes so far is to have a pie thrown in my face.

Reading Rocks!

The minerals a rock contains and what has happened to it make it unique.

Look at the different layer of this rock created through time. 

Do you think there is another rock exactly like this one?

 

Just like rocks, the things we do in our life create who we are and make us unique.

The books we read, the things we learn, all add "layers" to who we are.

We are each different, just like each rock is different. 

The important thing is that we continue to read, learn and grow every day...  

adding beautiful layers to who we are.

My summer ROCKED!

Now I'm ready to Tune in @ the Library and
have a rockin' good time back at school.

This year we will learn how to tune in at the library...

Summer Library

Summer Library will be on Wednesday

from 10-Noon this summer. 

Come "DIG INTO READING"

June 4, 11, 18, 25

July 2, 9, 23, 30

August 6, 13

*The School will be closed on Wednesday, July 16th, for floor cleaning.

School will be out before you know it. Above is a summer reading calendar with fun ideas on how to keep reading this summer. *Click on the calendar to see a larger copy.

Also, click on links under the "Summer Reading" list to the left to find other ways you can have fun,  and get free stuff for, reading this summer.

Shel Silverstein

Poem in Your Pocket...

Have you shared a poem in a pocket?

Thank you to those that have shared poems with me. 

Here is one of my favorites…

I hope everyone will share at least one poem this month.

Poem in a Pocket

Put a poem in Orchard Teacher or Staff pockets...

You'll notice pockets hanging around our school this month. It is National Poetry Month and we will be sharing poetry in the library, as well as around the whole school. You can participate by simply sticking a copy of the poem you want to share in the pocket that is hanging by the classroom of the person you want to share with.

Happy National Poetry Month!

BOB

We wrapped up the Battle of the Books by having a district competition on Saturday, then an all-star student vs. teacher/staff battle on Monday morning. I hope students that have participated in BOB have had fun and read some books they wouldn't have read otherwise. Below are pictures from the district competition and from our student vs. teacher assembly. Thank you for participating.

Our Battle of the Books Champions at the district battle.

"SUPER" READERS - Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Wells

Library Fun!

Reading is SWEET...

Watch how these bees work together to create their hive. 

We can work together in the library to make it a "sweet" place to learn and explore. 

I hope you will do your part to make the library SWEET!

Brandon Mull

We had the opportunity to have Brandon Mull come to our school to do an author visit on Friday, March 14th. The students loved his assembly! He is a very popular author at our school and we are getting a few new books that he talked about at the assembly. If you would like to check out his website with a full list of all of his books there is a link under "author sites" to the right of this post. Just click on Brandon Mull and it will take you to his website.

Helen Keller

Dictionaries

  Dictionaries list the words used in a language. 

With a Dictionary, you can learn...

-How to spell a word

-What a word means

-How to say a word

-What part of speech a word is

-How many syllables are in a word

-Whether or not to capitalize a word

-How to abbreviate a word (USA)

-Meanings of prefixes and suffixes for a word

Important things to know when using a dictionary...

• The words are organized in alphabetical order.  
• Guide words are used to help you locate a word quickly.
•  There may be more than one definition. To choose the correct definition...

1.  Decide how the word is used.

2.  Read all meanings of the word given to you.

3.  Imagine a blank space in the sentence where the word appears.

4.  Substitute the meaning you feel is correct into that sentence.

5.  If the sentence makes sense, then you have the correct definition.

Have you heard of a matryoshka doll before?  

There is a giant matryoshka doll in the Olympics on the slopestyle course at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. Matryoshka's are a special nesting doll that originated in Russia. We have books in our library about matryoshka dolls and Russia if you want to learn more.

Photos taken from sports.yahoo.com                  

OLIVIA

PIG OUT ON BOOKS, 

like Olivia does.

Attention SUPER readers!

This week in the library we will be sharing good books we've read lately.

Students that have finished a "SUPER" book at their reading level lately will have the opportunity to share that book,  guess the scores for the Super Bowl, and win a "SUPER" prize for having the closest guess.

Can you DEWEY it?

Dewey Decimal Game