We can S-P-E-L-L !!!

As the students were completing their work in January, Gerardo wanted to share his ability to spell his name...with his eyes closed! Go G-E-R-A-R-D-O!!!!!

Sea Monkeys!

Leilani asked if she could bring her Sea Monkeys to school. Being that I am teaching early childhood, I thought it would be a great way to intrinsically motivate the students to create rich language opportunities, enhance writing skills and enable the children to ask questions and learn about new ideas.

Before Leilani shared the Sea Monkeys with the children, the students wrote predictions about what they thought the Sea Monkey looked like.

Leilani shared that the Sea Monkeys love the sun. She feeds them algae to crave their hunger and to keep them healthy.



After learning about the Sea Monkeys, the children returned to their seats and wrote about two things that they learned about the Sea Monkeys.

Thanks to Leilani for sharing her treasure!

Health

This past week, my class was afforded the opportunity to have Eric Bengston come to visit out class and talk about health! He spoke to us about green-light, yellow-light and red-light foods! We now know that we need to eat as many fruits and vegetables as we can! We also learned that you can either pay now, or pay later! We think that it is very important to eat good, healthy foods!

We Use the Smart Board to Help Us Learn How to Read!

We write on the Smart Board. Sometimes, we even ask the Smart Board if it can read our sentences! My favorite activity on the Smart Board is when we click the frog and it spits out words like "the," "like," "to," "come" and "he." We read words and then we click the box and pictures appear!

My favorite activity on the Smart Board is the Matching Game. It is a memory game.

The Smart Board helps us learn about animals, money, spelling and counting.

We love the Smart Board because we get to use the Smart Board everyday!

Thank you for the Smart Board.

The Smart Board is beautiful and it helps us to become good readers!

What happens when you put wood in water?

We filled up some tubs with water and got out our wood samples to see what would happen to the wood when placed in water! What do you think happened? .... You guessed it! IT FLOATS!

Pictures from A Day Made Better

Monaco Teacher Wins Award

Monaco Elementary Kindergarten Teacher is “A Day Made Better” Winner

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (October 8, 2009) – Andrew Giles typically spends his classroom budget before the school year even begins. His story is similar to that of thousands of teachers across the country who often rely on personal funds to create high-quality learning experiences for their students throughout the school year.

Giles, a kindergarten teacher at Monaco Elementary School in Adams 14, is the recipient of an “A Day Made Better” award, an annual award program sponsored by OfficeMax and Adopt-A-Classroom that recognizes not only outstanding instructors but also provides them with educational resources to assist in students’ learning experiences.

Each year, more than 1,100 teachers receive $1,000 in school supplies. The project mission, according to www.adaymadebetter.com, is “Working to Erase Teacher Funded Classrooms”.

Monaco Teacher Drew Giles Wins AwardOn the morning of Tuesday, October 6, several OfficeMax employees visited Giles and his students in his kindergarten classroom with Monaco Principal Jennifer Ikenouye, and presented him with a box of classroom supplies including a digital camera, a printer and other learning resources. As students flocked around the unopened box and unexpected newcomers, OfficeMax District Sales Manager Herb Brown presented Giles with an award certificate to recognize his contributions to elementary education.

“The students kept asking if it was my birthday,” laughs Giles. “I told them it was a gift reflecting the great job the students and teachers do at Monaco Elementary. I used the box as the basis for a vocabulary lesson and asked the children to make predictions about what was inside. This is an amazing school. If you look around Monaco, it’s evident that the leadership, students, parents and volunteers have made this a positive and engaging place to learn.”

Photo caption: Monaco Elementary School teacher Andrew Giles (second from left) and school principal, Jennifer Ikenouye (right), with OfficeMax team members during “A Day Made Better” award presentation.