Calling all Experts!
This week, our third-grade authors have been hard at work finishing their informational books. Each student chose a topic they are “experts” on, such as soccer, dance, pugs, and more, and wrote multiple chapters to share their expertise. They also created text features like glossaries, tables of contents, and diagrams to make their books more informative. We are so proud of their creativity and effort and are looking forward to publishing these books to share with other students!
Our One Word and the Daruma Doll!
We’ve been exploring a beautiful Japanese tradition to display our one word for the year. Students decorated their own Daruma dolls and wrote their one word in Japanese characters on them. Daruma Dolls are symbols of perseverance and good fortune used in the new year. We learned about these dolls during the Japanese New Year study. In Japan, the tradition involves coloring in one eye of the doll when setting a goal, and the other eye is colored in once the goal is achieved! We are excited to watch our students grow, check in with themselves and color that second eye in!
Finishing Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
This week, we also finished our beloved read-aloud, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and the class absolutely loved it! Each day, students listened intently, and our discussions were some of the best we’ve had. One of the themes of the book is being grateful for what we already have, and our class has been reflecting on how fortune isn’t about money or material things—it’s about family, kindness, and love. This ties beautifully into the Daruma doll tradition, which is meant to bring good fortune. As we worked on our dolls, we realized that in many ways, we already have so much good fortune in our lives.
Important Dates:
January 20th – NO School -MLK Day