Just in Time for Halloween!

Monsters are beginning to pop up in room 2. We are happy to have partnered up with a wonderful second grade class in Olympia Washington to complete a fun and educational writing project. Here is a description of this project from the Monster Exchange website.

Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster.


The written descriptions, original monster pictures, and redrawn monster pictures are scanned and uploaded to the Internet using the browser-based Monster Gallery Builder.

The kids are really looking forward to exchanging descriptions to see how accurately our friends can draw our monsters. It should be a great learning experience!

Hello Blog World!

Okay so it's time for me to stop procrastinating and start blogging again. I have a bad habit of starting great projects and never finishing them...THIS will not be one of them!

I have decided that I need to get over my perfectionism. I never thought that I was a perfectionist, but as I reflect back on the projects I've let go it makes perfect sense. Basically, I end up quiting when my creativity begin to dwindle. If I can't think of the perfect story, topic, or next step, I end up putting the project on the back burner while I "wait" for the creative juices to flow again. Well sometimes they flow in a whole different direction and I never get back to many great projects that just need to be completed.

So, I have decided that I need to stop over thinking this blog. Things that seem everyday and mundane in the classroom to me could possibly be things that you want to hear about. It's time for me to get back to why I originally started this blog....to give you a glimpse into the world of second graders. Some days it may be exciting and creative and other days it may be simple and routine. Either way, I am back to blogging and excited to share with you what's happening in our little world!