First grade had a little fun this week making their own cartoons using Professor Garfield's Comic Lab.  Students were encouraged to create a cartoon with a beginning, middle, and end. They did a terrific job!

When you draw a robot, it is said, you always start with a square head.
To avoid rust he never cries, now draw him triangle eyes.
He can travel north and south, give him now a robot mouth.
This robot is not a wreck, so give him a nice long neck.
Now don't make him look shoddy, draw him a mechanical body.
If you sound the alarms, he will protect us with two strong arms.
In case he falls, to help him land, draw him a left and right hand.
You could watch him do a robot dance, if you give him some crazy pants.
Now to end this dilemma, on top draw him an antenna!

Kindergarten had a fun time drawing and writing about their robots this week. They were so good at listening and following directions. I can tell they are almost first graders.

April is national poetry month. The second grade classes have been working hard writing and typing spring acrostic poems. They did such a great job. 

Thursday, March 2nd is reading night here at Willard East! We will be celebrating The BFG with various activities throughout the school. In the computer lab students will get to find out their giant name. Be sure to stop by for a minute to get your "giant name" name tag.

In honor of National Acts of Kindness Week we talked about being kind to each other. Kindness includes kind acts, kind words, and a kind attitude. Much of the time if we have a kind attitude then kind words and acts will follow. Third grade classes chose someone from their family to write kind words about. Students first organized their thoughts in a table using Google docs. Then they transferred that information into a word cloud.

While there is certainly no snow outside this winter, it has been snowing in the 1st grade computer lab classes. Check out the snowmen students have made using Google drawings. I'm pretty impressed with their skills!

In January all of my computer classes learned a  little about Martin Luther King Jr and what he did to change America. Fourth grade made word clouds with a quote from M.L.K. using the website tagul.com.  His word are still inspirational today!

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has a wonderful time over Christmas break! If you are looking for something to keep your child busy while you finish up some last minute wrapping there are lots of fun things to do on the computer lab website. Some of my classes made cards for family using Card Creator. These would be so cute in color. Be sure to check out the holiday page.

Next week, December 5th - 11th, is National Hour of Code week. This is a global event that schools from around the world take part in to learn about computer science. Willard East will be participating by doing activities on Code.org.  As technology becomes more and more important in every facit of life so does knowing how to create technology.

This will be my first time to participate in Hour of Code. I am looking forward to sharing that experience with my Willard East students. You can join us by going to hourofcode.com/us/learn.