Here in the Flower Hill Media Center, my students enjoy celebrating in BIG and small ways!

We began December by decorating my “Reading is Snow Much Fun” bulletin board with handmade snowflakes.

National Cookie Day – December 4th:

Although I didn’t have actual cookies for the students to eat (I did for the staff, however!), I did have a poster for them to sign with their favorite cookie flavor noted, as well as a variety of cookie recipes for them to try at home with their parents.

Dewey Decimal System Day – December 10th:

Diane Creel, my predecessor here at Flower Hill, had left me her Melvil Dewey puppet, so I set up a learning center with him as the centerpiece so that I could remind my students how and why the Dewey Decimal Classification System was created.  I finished up the mini-lesson with  Melvil Dewey, the International Library Hip Hop Superstar’s Dewey Decimal Rap – a student favorite!

Celebrating the Hour of Code was the highlight of the month – my students absolutely loved learning the basics of computer programming during the week of December 15-19.  Kindergarten through grade 2 students worked together at the Promethean board; students in grade 4 worked individually in the computer lab, and students in grades 3 and 5 used their Chromebooks. Looking at these pictures you can see how engaged they all were – and how willing they were to help each other when someone got stuck.  My plan is to go “Beyond One Hour”  and continue with an in-school (and after-school, depending on popularity!) programming club to encourage my students to continue learning about programming – and perhaps inspire them to pursue a career in computer science!   Wouldn’t that be awesome?!

Happy New Year!   I will end this post with a quote from Albert Einstein, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”