Happy Holidays!

It has been a busy, fun and festive week here at Bear Creek! We finished learning all about the Piedmont Region of Pennsylvania and learned some cool new tools we can use to present our projects after the holiday break. We also worked on writing narrative stories based on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and we focused on using descriptive words to tell our readers about the food. Please check out our blogs and leave a comment about our stories!

As we said, it was also a FUN week here at Bear Creek. Even though we were busy wrapping up some things before the holidays we had time to fit in several exciting activities!

Red and Green Day and our holiday Carol Sing were on Wednesday, and many students AND teachers were in the holiday spirit! Check out the slideshow below to see some of the read and green outfits.



Then on Thursday we had a spectacular holiday party with Mrs. Towsen's class. We would like to thank Tommy's mom for planning such an amazing party. Every student had so much fun, learned some new things and took home a bag of goodies. What was even more exciting is that Miss Coleman came to our party! Many students in the Bair's Den said it was the BEST Christmas present to have Miss Coleman back, and I agree. Special thanks to Mrs. Gramm, Mrs. Locker, Mrs. Swanger, Ms. Gupta, Mrs. Bitner and Mrs. Fink for coming in to man the stations and make sure everything ran smoothly! We couldn't have done it without you! As you can see from the slideshow below, it was an extraordinary time!



I would like to take this opportunity to send each family and student of the Bair's Den the warmest wishes for a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. My hope for all of you is that you find peace, love and happiness during 2012

Hello Bair's Den! From Miss Coleman

Hi Bair's Den!!

I hope all of you are doing well and enjoying your last couple days of school before break!
How are things going for all of you at Bear Creek? I hope you are having a wonderful time with Mrs. Bair. :)
I am doing great but I miss all of you very much. I am so thankful that I was able to have all of you as students. You made my time at Bear Creek unforgettable.
I can't wait to see all of you and hope to see you soon!

- Miss Coleman

Saying Goodbye

On Wednesday we had a sad day - we had to say goodbye to Miss Coleman because she finished her student teaching experience. It is hard to believe that her time with us is over already. To show our appreciation for Miss Coleman we did a few special things for her.

First, each class had a Compliments Car Wash. Miss Coleman walked between two lines, and each student complimented her on something that she did well while she was working in our classroom.

Then, we presented her with two teacher bags FILLED to the brim with supplies that she'll need when she starts her classroom. We signed the bags and wrote one special word to describe Miss Coleman. She loved her gifts, and she is definitely all set with post-it notes!

Finally, our celebration would not have been complete without a class picture with Miss Coleman:

And some silly pictures to wrap up the fun!

Miss Coleman, you were an amazing student teacher! We can't wait until you can come back and visit us, and we look forward to the day when you get your first teaching job. :)

Celebrating the Holidays

Do you and your family celebrate Christmas? If you do, there is a fun website to help you count down to Santa's arrival!

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and its predecessor CONAD began tracking Santa in 1955. Since then, how the organization has tracked Santa has changed, and on Christmas Eve NORAD uses Google Earth, one of the applications that our class uses in Social Studies, to track Santa and teach kids a little bit more about unique locations around the world.

In addition to following Santa's journey, there are some fun logical thinking games that you can play in Santa's Village. Each day a new game is added to test your thinking skills. This year Day 1 is the Christmas Tree Light Up, and it is super challenging even on the easy level. Give it a try and tell us how fast you and your family (or your classmates) can light up the tree in the comments!

Twin Day

Today we had another school spirit day here at Bear Creek. Friends could dress alike for Twin Day to show off their friendship and their school spirit! Please enjoy our little slideshow of all of the "twins" that were spotted in the lower level 4th grade hallway.

Free BEAR

Every Day 6 all of the 4th grade students at Bear Creek who have completed all of their assignments and followed the Code of Conduct have the opportunity to participate in our Free BEAR time. Students are able to choose from a variety of activities that change each month. The choices include group games in the gym, nature walks, reading, playing board and card games, learning a foreign language, using the computers and doing arts and crafts.

We recognize how hard our students work each and every day, and we are happy to give the kids an opportunity each cycle to pick a fun activity to do. Take a look at the kids enjoying themselves during our last Free Bear time!

I'm Thankful!

Dear Families,

It's hard for me to believe that it is the end of November already. It seems like it was just yesterday that I met you all for the first time, and we went through the ridiculous floods! As we begin the holiday season I would just like to take a moment to share with you some of the many reasons that I am thankful.

- I am thankful for your support of your child's learning. I know that having kids do homework is definitely not at the top of everybody's fun to do list, but I appreciate the time you take to help your child see the value of their education.

- I am thankful for all of the comments you have been leaving for the students on their blogs. Every comment you leave shows them that they have an audience and people care about what they have to say.

- I am thankful for our wonderful student teacher, Miss Coleman, who is doing a fabulous job with the classes.

- I am thankful for our beautiful new building. I know there may be some things that are taking a bit of getting used to, but we are very lucky to have such an amazing facility.

And most importantly, I am thankful for my wonderful students. I love all the hugs, smiles, questions and challenges because each and every one reminds me how lucky I am that I get to be a teacher. Thank you all for sharing your children with me each day.

:)

Mrs. Bair

Social Studies with Miss Coleman

Hello Bair's Den Students!!!

Today we started our new social studies unit on Pennsylvania! I introduced our essential question for the unit: "What makes Pennsylvania a unique part of the United States?" and we had a great discussion about why all of you love living in Pennsylvania and many great things about our state.

We also came up with some great questions to research throughout the unit. One question that our groups asked the most today was "Who Founded Pennsylvania?" What a great and important question! Tomorrow we will learn more about our state's founder, William Penn!

Throughout our unit I would love to see some of your pictures from Pennsylvania. Have you been to the PA Grand Canyon? Do you like to camp in the beautiful the State Forests and mountains in Pennsylvania? What kinds of animals do you see in Pennsylvania?

In the meantime, here are some pictures from our discussion today! Can you tell me what we're looking at?

Thanks for all of your hard work today! I can't wait to talk more about Pennsylvania tomorrow with all of you! See you tomorrow!

-Miss Coleman

Another Busy Week

It has been another busy week in the Bair's Den! We wrapped up our Map Skills unit, and all of the students did a FANTASTIC job on their common assessments. We'll be incorporating all of the skills we learned during this unit as we move on to Pennsylvania and the United States during the rest of the school year.

We also finished our first theme in reading where we focused on a variety of skills and strategies. The students continue to learn, use and review these strategies as part of our CAFE menu:

We also just completed talking about asking questions and noting details. Be sure to ask your children about the different types of questions and why it's important to ask questions before, during and after reading.

Time is going so quickly in the Bair's Den. I'm looking forward to meeting many parents at conferences!

Can You Help?

Today a purple Aeropostale hoodie went missing in our classroom. My guess is that because we switched seats somebody may have grabbed the wrong sweatshirt off of a chair. If you happen to find a purple hoodie sweatshirt at your house that doesn't belong to your child, you can send it back in tomorrow.

Thanks, Bair's Den Families!

Scary Hair Day!

There's nothing better than celebrating all of our hard work with a school spirit day! Check out this slideshow of all of our great 'dos from today's Scary Hair Day.

Just a Reminder

I hope everybody is having a great weekend! This is just a little reminder to please check your child's homework folder each day. I've been noticing some overstuffed folders here in class, and it's making it difficult for the kids to keep their homework and papers that need to be returned separate from the informational papers that can stay at home.

Thank you for your help with this!

Our New Adventure

We enjoyed learning about the Iditarod and using it to practice our reading and social studies skills. Today we found out the next topic that we'll be using to learn our reading, writing, researching and social studies skills. That topic is the Titanic!

While we all think we know a lot about the Titanic, we still have lots of questions. We are looking forward to learning more about this amazing ship and its story and practicing some important skills as we do it.

If you would like to learn more about the Titanic, you can check out our "Websites and Apps We Use" page here on the blog. If you scroll down to the bottom you can watch videos, read information, do some interactive activities, and check out artifacts from the ship. We will keep you posted as we learn about this really interesting and exciting topic!

complete Sentence Challange

Can you find the complete and incomplete sentences? Tell us which sentences are incomplete and if they need a subject or a predicate to fix them!

My mom and me went to Kmart.
My pretty sister.
Drink coke.

Complete Sentance Challenge

Can you find the complete and incomplete sentences? Tell us which sentences are incomplete and if they need a subject or a predicate to fix them!

My mommy went to the store and bought me chocolate.
Jumping on a trampoline.
Chocolate bars.

Complete sentence challenge

Can you find the complete and incomplete sentences? Tell us which sentences are incomplete and if they need a subject or a predicate to fix them!

Me and my sister went to Hershey park.
My cute puppy mojo.
Said hi.





By Alyssa Kristen alexis Mason Josh Mc Joshua N

Connecting with Our Classmate

Today was a really fun day in the Bair's Den. We have a classmate who has been sick and out of school for about a week. He's feeling better, but still can't come back to us. Mrs. Bair knows of a teacher in Nevada, Mr. Crosby, who used Skype to have one of his students be part of his class even when she was sick. So today Owen Skyped with us so he could come to school! Check out these pictures of our afternoon:

Miss Coleman had a conference with Owen to help him with predicting.

There were several helpers who made sure Owen could see what was going on.

Owen worked with his groups to identify coordinates of points using latitude and longitude.

It's going to be nice seeing Owen on the computer, but we can't wait until he is back in school with us!

Iditarod Projects!

Over the last two weeks we have been working on reading strategies as we read the story Akiak. This story tells about a sled dog's amazing adventure during the Iditarod. When we started this story, we realized that we knew very little about the race and had lots of questions. Many of these questions didn't get answered in our story so we worked together in groups to find these answers and present them to the rest of the class.

You can view the videos of our presentations below. These videos are currently hosted on our private YouTube site. If you cannot see the embedded videos and would like to view them, please send me an email at rebecca_bair@etownschools.org, and I will send you the private links.

Click on this video to learn about the equipment mushers might use:


Watch this video to learn some basic information about the race:


Mushers are the brave, strong men and women who ride with the dogs. You can learn more about the mushers by watching this video:


And finally, we had LOTS of questions about the amazing dogs who run this race, and two groups share what they learned about the dogs:




If you would like to learn more about the Iditarod, you can click on the "Websites and Apps We Use" tab and check out our many different sites where we found our information.

A Busy Week

We FINALLY had a full and busy week here in the Bair's Den! We completed our first reading assessment using the strategies of summarizing and story structure. At the beginning of our story we had a lot of questions about the Iditarod, and the last few days we have been researching and finding those answers.

We continued to review the continents and oceans. We also talked about the lines of latitude and played a new version of Simon Says to help us learn them! Ask your child to play by using the important lines of latitude on the map in their Social Studies folder.


In science we took our first trip to the lab, and we had a chance to actually work with the tools that scientists use in their labs.

Our first box of books arrived, and we were very excited to see everything that will be added to our library!

As you can see, it's been a GREAT week in the Bair's Den, and lots of learning took place. What did YOU learn this week?

A HUGE Thank You!!

Dear Families,

Your support of your children's reading is AMAZING!! Research shows that children who are able to select their own books at their good fit reading levels enjoy reading more and become better readers. You purchased so many books through our monthly book orders that I was able to select 43 new books for our classroom library!!! I also earned coupons to order 6 free books with our next order!

There will not be a book order in October because the students will be able to purchase books at the Scholastic Book Fair during their library class on October 12. You can also come and visit the Book Fair on Tuesday, October 4 and Tuesday, October 11 from 6:30 - 8:30. I will try to be at the book fair both evenings to help you find good fit books for the kids.

Once again, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate how you are supporting your children's reading. I am looking forward to hearing about their new books and sharing all of the new additions to our classroom library when the order arrives.

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. Bair

Our School Tour - By Group 4

We're team 4 the members are :Jordan,Alyssa,Brennen,Kody. Why don't you take a look at our photo's from Bear Creek? We thought that these would show you that Bear Creek is an interesting school. We hope you like our photos.

We hope you liked our tour!

Our School Tour by 2

Hello we are Alyssa Lexi Josh Seth Sarena and we want to welcome you to Bear Creek.Also these are some of the inportant pictures of Bear Creek.So we hope you enjoy the pictures.These are the most awesomest parts about Bear Creek.We hope you like Bear Creek.

feel free to write comments hope you like the pictures.thanks!

Our School Tour by Group 5

HI we are owen alexis Kristen Brianna this is what we did on our school world tour!!!! We took pictures of the gym the IMC and some other class rooms. Brianna's favorite pic is the IMC. Kristen's favorite picture is of the gym. Owen's favorite picture is of the brain in the Health room. Alexis's favorite picture is also the IMC!!!

I hope you liked our school world tour!!!!!
Typed by Kristen with help by Brianna!! The people that thought of the writing are Owen and Alexis!!!