Ms. Nancy's Library & Technology Blog

This is a cool video I found (it’s from 2011), all about the amusement park where we spent our summers when I was a kid. The students and I are celebrating Oregon’s State Birthday by talking about this, and other interesting stories about our state.

Oregon’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day, by the way! Awww…

Here is another neat site, too, all about Portland, Ore.

Enjoy!

— Mrs. R

Hello my students, GeoQuest fans,

It’s time to learn about Southern Africa. This coming month’s GeoQuest testing will be on Wednesday, Feb. 26th.

Level 1: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic & Comoros
Level 2: Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Kenya & Lesotho
Level 3: Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius & Mozambique
Level 4: Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles & Somalia
Level 5: South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia & Zimbabwe

Links to free websites:

I Like to Learn

Lizard Point

Sheppard Software

and… Stack the Countries is one you will need to pay for.

(Reminder… GeoQuest for March will take place on Wednesday, March 12. This means only two weeks between quizzes, so please prepare!)

Study hard!

— Mrs. R

Did you already catch that one? All I can say is: Cool!

The students and I watched this one this week. We (heart) pandas.

Then we checked out some of my favorite nature/animal websites and wrote about animals. We use Google docs at our school, and I must say, it’s handy for those times when you would like to get going on notes and research for a project and tuck it away. The students also like the e-mail and file-sharing features. Please take a look at National Geo Kids, Smithsonian, the San Diego Zoo (their game page is very fun, too), the National Zoo and the Oregon Zoo.

(ps — hat tip to writer Susan Orlean — I read about Mr. Dajun in her Smithsonian article.)

Have a great weekend, everyone.

— Mrs. R

What did one eye say to the other?

Between you and me, something smells.

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

That picture is of the Pacific Ocean, by the way, not the Indian or the Atlantic Ocean, or the Arabian or Mediterranean Sea. (Those are your first four clues!)

This month for Geography Quest, the students at my school are studying Northern Africa.

Level 1: Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad & Djibouti

Level 2: Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana & Guinea

Level 3: Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya & Morocco

Level 4: Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria & Senegal

Level 5: Sierra Leone, Sudan & Southern Sudan, Togo & Tunisia

Would you like some handy links?

How about…

I Like to Learn/Africa

Sheppard Software/Africa

and…

LizardPoint

Stack the Countries is one you will need to pay for through iTunes.

Study hard, kids… GeoQuest Quiz Day is January 29th.

— Mrs. R

Joke of the Day, my friends. You ready?

Where do boats go when they are sick?
To the doc(k).

PS — Happy New Year! Year of the Horse is coming up for 2014.

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

It’s Hour of Code week, people. Let’s have some fun. Today the third-graders at our school rocked the coding. The kindergarten students come in right after, and they had a good time touring the computer lab and seeing what the big kids were working on. When the third grade students left, some of the littles jumped onto the computers and picked up right where the big kids left off! A few of the fifth graders dropped by and took a look at the coding, too. I love when kids of all different ages help each other, and give each other tips and compliments. I always love teaching, but when we have multi-age groups working together like that? I love teaching just a little bit extra.

Fun, fun and more fun.

The tutorials are easy to use, and the kids liked designing their own stuff. They jumped around between Hour of Code and Scratch, and when the fifth graders came in for class, they did the same. For Scratch, a good place to start is by clicking on the orange kitty and going from there. Drag blocks to the right-hand side of the screen and have fun.

This month in technology, we’re also checking in on the zoo cams. The National Zoo’s cam is popular, and we’re all fond of the animal cams and videos from the San Diego Zoo. (Look for the panda birthday videos… very sweet.)

It’s been snowing in the Portland, Ore. area, so some of our classes have watched “Brave Irene” by William Steig on Storyline Online. It’s one of my favorites.

Enjoy your week. Learn a lot, play hard, have fun,

Mrs. R

Thursday = joke of the day!

What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?

A stick.

(Photo by Steve Rawley)

For Thursday…

I’ve got a knock knock joke. You start…

Just kidding 😉

Here’s one:

Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Aardvark!
Aardvark who?
Aardvark a hundred miles for one of your smiles!

For Thursday…

What did the ocean say to the beach?

Nothing, just waved.

(Photo by Steve Rawley)