Challenge #8 – 3 Altogether

Animated countdown

The count down is on and in just a few short weeks the Blog Challenge will end. This week the challenge is to visit the suggested blogs and leave a combined total of three comments altogether. After visiting each of the blogs, we decided that we would comment on the following:

  1. Ripple Effect – The students loved the Pivot Animation projects and we are eager to try one of our own.
  2. 4/5/6 Learning Centre – We have learned so much from the related links on her sidebar and also enjoy reading the regular posts. The plan to meet at lunchtime to help new bloggers was such a good idea. We may implement something like that ourselves.
  3. Mrs Ratzel – The Top Ten listing provided an authentic look into the minds of students and their thoughts on blogging. We are also honored to appear in their sidebar as one of the many blogs that this classroom follows. For that we thank you.

Having completed Challenge 8, we will also be completing our voting for 2010 Edublog Awards within the next week. We are sure that some of our favorite will finish on top.

Celebrating the Holidays

chriThe Bloggers’ Cafe has challenged our class to create a post telling everyone how we celebrate a special occasion.  Since Christmas will soon be upon us, we decided to ask the children how they celebrated this holiday. Their responses were very interesting! Adrian’s family goes to the park and plays games until it is time to go back and open gifts.  Alex is going hunting with his father.  Before he leaves on his hunting trip, he goes with his family to Santa’s Round Up to shop for Christmas presents.  Nicole’s family has a special tradition involving “Elfton.” Elfton is a special elf that sits on the bookcase and watches to make sure the children are being good. He then reports to “you know who” at the North Pole. Kristen and her family also have a special tradition. They put their Christmas tree up on Thanksgiving night.  She is also going on a ski trip!  Our class really enjoyed stepping up to the challenge issued by The Bloggers’ Cafe. Be sure to check their blog out!

Do you have an interesting way in which you celebrate Christmas? Leave a comment and tell us all about your family tradition!

Christmas Crafts

imagesThe holidays have begun, and we are excited about the activities both at school and of course, at home.  Christmas trees are up in the stores, and a few families have already put up their own trees. The only thing left to add are the gifts. With that thought in mind, we have found some Christmas How-to videos and slides at Kaboose showing you how to make some easy gifts for those special people on your list.

We would like to add to this list of crafts with your ideas. Please leave us a comment with instructions and/or links to some of your favorite holiday crafts. Then watch for them to be added here to our post. We will, of course, leave a link to you or your blog, giving you the credit to the idea.

Time to Nominate

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Click on the Comic Strip for a Larger View.

Created at Make Beliefs Comix!

This period of the 2010 Challenge Yourself to Blog is coming to a close and it is time to nominate for the 2010 Edublog Awards. We have visited so many outstanding blogs during this season that it is difficult to choose just one from each category. We are also hoping that someone will choose to nominate the C-O Connections, of course!

My students, while a small class,  have “special” gifts and with each post they have attempted, they have shown me that blogging is definitely worth the time and effort it takes on the part of the teachers. These students who sometimes struggle to get their thoughts on paper, thrive in this Web 2.0 environment.  Thank you to Sue Waters and Miss Wyatt for providing opportunities where my students can feel successful.  We will look forward to participating again next year.

Our Nominations Are:

Best resource sharing blogLarry Ferlazzo – We go to this blog often to search for resources. You should too!

Best new blogTiara O’Malley – She just started with her new 3rd grade class of new bloggers less than 3 months ago and already has created a class of student blogs as well, Jot Your Thoughts. She is committed to integrating technology into her classroom.

Best educational use of video/visualMrs. Yollis – Truly a testimony to the rest of us of how blogging can be used to promote learning. LOVE her blogroll!

Best educational use of a social networkRichard Bryne – His Free Technology for Teachers is a valued presence on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Google Friend Connect.

Best teacher blogBrent Coley – While I do not know if this qualifies as a “blog”, his class site has given great inspiration and guidance to our class, particularly in the area of podcasting.

Best Educational WikiVoicethread 4 Education – This site really helped connect us to others attempting to use Voicethread

Best Educational Tech Support BlogNina Peery, Keystrokes – This blog provides easy-to-find resources, ideas, safe search engines, etc. for students, teachers, and even PARENTS!

Best Group blogChallenge Yourself to Blog – It’s the reason we are all here…Enough said. Thank you for tearing down the walls.

Best Individual BlogMs. Tiatiana – She has worked hard to collect educational links in all core areas and is certainly successful in this endeavor and worthy of recognition for that service to educators.

Best Student BlogStephanie Hunter – Chicken Scratch – This teacher “found” a way to allow her third graders to write even though their “posts” are actually page edits. The teacher maintains the home page of the Student blog and students post on their individual pages. Created in August 2010, this blog has already showcased, as Mrs. Hunter states, “glimpses into the inner-workings of their fascinating and creative young minds!”

Best Class blogJan Smith, Huzzah! – If you are looking for something to inspire, this is it!

IdeaGood Luck to all nominees and remember that you are all winners, especially the students you have awakened.

Photo Attribution to annais; Flickr Creative Commons.

Sssssss….Snakes!

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The topic of “Snakes” is a subject that always sparks interest in our students for one reason or another. It is one of the first letters and sounds that we learn as a young child, and the snake books are always checked out in the library.  So I thought that I would give each of you a chance to tell your story about Snakes.

My most recent story happened last weekend. We were filling up deer feeders with corn at the deer woods and walked right by this little snake. Because it was a poisonous species and was residing at the base of the deer stand that my grandchildren would be visiting, he no longer lives there. Can you identify the name of this snake by looking closely at its body markings?

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Not all snakes are dangerous, and they all serve a valuable purpose.  Click on word

and look around. Leave us a comment about some information that you discovered on the website, or leave us YOUR snake story. We are interested in hearing all about it.

Blog Challenge#7

2010-11-14_1801We are nearing the end of the Blog Challenge with Challenge #7 already upon us. This week’s challenge directed us to read an excellent blog post, Organize Your Blog with Categories, by TeacherMom.  We have three categories on our blog and may soon consider adding others.

The blog post by Sue Waters, What’s the Difference Between Tags and Categories, You Ask? resulted in our adding a tag cloud to the sidebar of our blog.

Right now you do not see too many tags, but over the next few weeks we will be revisiting some of our posts and talking about what keywords we should use to “tag” and identify these postings.  This is an action we should have done a long time ago.

Thanks to Challenge Yourself to Blog it is getting done now!!

Open Season!

This past weekend was the opening of deer season here in East Texas, and I was right there.  I really wanted the students to see why I love to go to the deer woods.  Here are two videos. The first one is a 360〫view from one of my stands.  How beautiful it is! I wish I could have all of you with me.

And here is the reason that I sit all day long in the cold and quiet.



Have you ever been hunting or spent time in the woods? Please write a comment and tell me about it.

Count out Three Challenge #6

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1…2…3!  That’s what we did!  For Blog Challenge #6, we visited a student blog. (1) We then chose a blog from that site. (2) We then picked a blog from that particular site. (3)   We did this….you guessed it!    THREE times!

Our first blog that we commented on was Simone’s Blog. She had a wonderful post about adding a cursor.  She gave us the link and instructions to follow.  It was great! We had no problem doing it ourselves. Great job Simone!

Our second blog we commented on was Ashley’s Awesome Blog. She had some wonderful things to say about Ontario. Great picture of the falls Ashley!

Our third blog we commented on was The Nick Cool Blog. He has a picture of his new pet fish.  The blog looks really good. Keep up the posting Nick!

These are just a few of the fantastic blogs available out there! We have really enjoyed the blogging challenge this year. Keep on Blogging!