Holiday Party and TA Skits

Wow, what a day!!  First, students had a blast at the holiday party.  Students had choices of rooms to rotate to every 15 minutes.  My room had karaoke going on and the kids sung their hearts out.  You also may have heard about my challenge to them.  If they brought 100 cans in for the food drive by today, I let them put makeup on my face and dress me as a woman.  They had 79 cans yesterday and today came in with 159 more!!!! Wow, needless to say, I am dressed as a woman as I write this right now.  Here are some pics:

PEN PALS!!!

Ms. Galyean's class received letters from Franc today.  Students  in my homeroom have received emails from Germany.  Both of these exchanges are helping our understanding of people from around the world.  Here are some pictures of our excited students reading the letters.

Skating Trip Fun!!

What a great trip we had today!!!  It was awesome to see advanced skaters helping beginner skaters.  It was equally nice to see beginner skaters who were holding onto the boards for dear life when they first began the day, to actually skating around toward the end.  The kids had a blast, we had a blast and we had countless great feedback from people at the rink!!  Here are some pics from the day!

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Fun-O-Ween

You may have heard, our 6th graders took the lead in making Halloween extra special  for the kindergarten and 1/2 grade students.  Students developed stations to lead their little buddies to.  Stations were a game of graveyard, musical chairs, pin the wart on the witch, stick your hand in the creepy mixture, pumpkin bowling and several others.  The younger students had a blast and the 6th graders did too!!  Great community building activity and these 6th graders ROCKED!!!!  Here are some pics!

Helping In The Kindergarten: Pumpkin Carving

We helped the kindergarten carve pumpkins today.  The little kids made the faces on the pumpkins and we carved them out for them.  Here are some pictures below:   (By the way, our kids were AWESOME with the little kids!!!)

Author's Visit the Eclipse Team

We were lucky enough to have Hinesburg author, Chris Tebbetts and Chalotte author, Joe Nusbaum visit our team today.  Both authors are promoting new books.  As a team, we just finished Tebbetts book that he cowrote with James Patterson, Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life.  Chris came into HCS a few years ago to do research for the book.  The students asked some great questions.  Both authors will be at the Brown Dog Book Store in town on Saturday at 3:00 to answer more questions and sign books. 

A Few More Videos

Learning More About China

Tao came in again today to teach us some basic Chinese language.  Students practiced basic phrases and how to count 1 -10.  Below are some videos of the students speaking.

Chinese High School Schedule

Our guest teacher, Tao shared with us her high school schedule.
Students begin their day at 7:00am.  They have 40 minute classes with 10 minutes between classes.  Students have a lunch break from 12:10-2:10.  From 7:00-7:30pm they have a dinner break and then back to class until 9:00pm when they go home.  WOW, you should have seen the students when she spoke of this schedule!!  Below are some pictures:

The Amazing Race Comes to Hinesburg

Students in my homeroom played a game in social studies modeled after the show, "The Amazing Race".  As a way of learning how to use latitude and longitude, pairs of students raced around the world in their atlas to find various locations first.  Along the way came "road blocks" that only one team member could perform.  Ask your son/daughter about the game.  Congrats to Brenna and Lily for winning the game!

First Seven Days Complete!

Wow, hard to believe we have been in school for only 7 days!  Students have been so great getting back into the groove of things!!  We had a special guest on Friday afternoon, as our visiting Chinese teacher came in to share pictures of her home town in China!  You will find some pictures of our visit below.