Happy Monday!

Today was a really great start to the week--I love when Mondays go like that!  My favorite quotable of the day:

(To set the scene--the class and I had just had a little "reminder" talk about what our manners look like at school and how we act in the hallways...)
Student: "Ms. Weissberg, I know why you tell us about how we're supposed to act at school."
Me: "Oh, really?"
Student: "Well, you know how you love it when we are quiet and walk in a straight line and don't touch the walls?" [I reallllly dislike when the kiddos have their hands all over walls...apparently I haven't kept this a secret!]
Me: "Yes, I love it when you behave like that..."
Student: "Well, it's because you're teaching us all the rules so that we know them when we get big and become teachers, too!"
...and then she skimpered off to the playground.  Sigh--such innocence :)

Books to share
I went to the public library this weekend, and, as always, I got distracted.  What was going to be a quick in-and-out trip (I even made an alphabetized list of books before I got there so I knew just what to look for and where) turned into an hour-ish of exploration and relaxation.  I just sort of "get lost" in libraries, in the best way possible.  And, as if losing yourself in one library isn't enough, I went to two branches this weekend to make sure I got all the books on my list.  Good news: got 'em all!  Here's what we read today:

We're working through our list of famous Americans as part of our Social Studies curriculum; George Washington was last week and now we're on to Abe Lincoln.  I was so impressed this morning when my class made a KWL chart of all the tidbits they already knew about him!  And, always curious, they had some great questions about him and his life.  This morning, we read A Picture Book of Abraham Lincoln by David Adler:

Then, this afternoon we read some more!  Those who say that they can't find ways to incorporate reading into math might just not be looking hard enough, because we find ways in Room 106 all the time :)  With our continuing study of money, we read Stuart J. Murphy's The Penny Pot:

 

And then, moving into our unit on measurement (that we kicked off--successfully!--today), we read a classic Leo Lionni book, Inch by Inch.  I love this book and was hoping my students would as well, and they sure did.  Inch by Inch has some fun birds in it, like a flamingo, heron, and toucan; an inchworm measures all different parts of these birds before meeting a nightingale, who asks the worm to measure its song.  It sparked some great conversation about non-standard measurement and was a fabulous segue into today's lesson!

A Miss Rumphius blog!

A dear friend of mine gave me the book Miss Rumphius a few years ago, and it quickly became one of my favorites.  Its' a beautiful book, with whimsical drawings and a touching ending.  It's about a woman named Alice who dreams of going to faraway places, live by the sea, and to do something to make the world more beautiful; in her lifetime, she does all of these things, and the last thing, making the world a more beautiful place, is the most difficult one.  Please read it if you have not already.

This weekend I stumbled on a blog with the same name as the book, and it was great.  The blog is written by a professor of education, and the title of it, "The Miss Rumphius Effect," was so clever, given the moral of the book.  The blog has great reading lists and a great theme.

One last thing I realized before I sign off: I always type "Ms. W" when I am talking about dialogue in my classroom between my students and myself, but none of them actually call me Ms. W--they all call me Ms. Weissberg!  So from now on, I promise to be more true to form on the blog :)


I hope all of your weeks got off to an equally successful start!

Love from Room 106,
Allie