Either That or It Falls Apart

Well, Barton is now with the Pippens and Ripken is now home with me. The Pippens have taken Barton into their home for the last...well, since George was in my class, so, what, four summers? Wow. As we exited the school building, Ripken was looking around as if to say, "What the HECK is going on here!?" To think he hasn't really moved (well, at least not too far) since last August right before school started.

He seems to be settling in nicely, or at least the crickets are, as I can hear them chirping.

Note to Ethan and Nick: Have your folks call, text, or e-mail me if you still want Ripken this summer. If not, he's good here, but I know I promised him to you. Sorry, I just had to get him out of the classroom today, otherwise who knows what would have happened to him.

I filled up four giant trash cans with junk today. It was pretty bad. And I could probably fill four more if I had another day, but for right now, I don't. Maybe right before school starts. Mr. Hunter walked in and said, "Wow, you really went to town."

Tomorrow I'm going to take all that change to the bank, finally, and have them make out a check to the American Cancer Society. Right now it's weighing the back of my car down. I thought I was about to get another hernia lifting it into the Jeep. And wouldn't you know, the only banks that will take that much change were closing as I was on my way home.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far!

Those Golden Words

I wanted to express my appreciation, as well as the students', to Mrs. Ann Block. Ann had sent me an e-mail earlier in the spring about a class whose teacher had told them to write the nicest thing they could think of about each of their classmates. She then took the papers and wrote out each child's list of compliments on separate sheets of paper and handed them out to each child.

Ann thought it would be a good idea to do this with my class, and I agreed.

Originally, I tried to just get them typed up myself, but gave up and took Ann up on her offer to do it. I sent them home with Rachel.

What Ann did was so much cooler than what I was doing anyway. Hopefully you've seen the beautiful, colored lettering on cardstock with your child's name at the top. These things are incredibly well done. They are frame-worthy. In fact, I am framing mine--now I just need to decide where to put them up, at home or at school.

I think those papers really go a long way to show what a tight-knit group the kids became over the school year. They really are a great group--every one of them.

Thanks again, Mrs. Block!

The Home of the Brave

Sure, today was the 100th Indy 500, and that's something to be commemorated.

But this weekend is, more importantly, a time to remember those who have served our country. In particular, we want to think about those close to us in 5-1 for the 2010/2011 school year, namely Eric Patterson, Petty Officer 3rd Class, who serves in the United States Navy Lt. Colonel Todd Spencer, father of Gary Spencer, who serves in the U.S. Army.

Over the past school year, my students and I learned that these soldiers are people that we know, and not nameless soldiers out there. They are our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, and friends.

We want to thank you all for your sacrifices and all you've done to secure our country against those who would do us harm. There is nothing we can ever do to thank you for your service to our country.

Thank you. Please know that we appreciate all that you, and all others who serve or have served, have done for us, and afforded us the lives we live each day.

Have You Seen the Little Pieces?

Thank you, class of 2010-2011, for:

• udders
• mistaking chapstick for a glue stick
• put your right cheek on your desk
• connect the dots, la la la la
• Ten Banana Cream Pies
• I'm gonna bust you up
• shree, the letter between M and N
• YPs and MPs
• Build Me Up Buttercup
• the thinking crane
• Aunt Sally
• The Train Met Lucy ("Lucy, it's time for dinner! OH MY GOSH, LUCY!!")
• pink pajamas penguins on the bottom
• Dr. Cone
• Kirby
• shamwow
• don't look at the bottom
• "That's why pencils have erasers"
• Red Strong
• octobugs
• Origami Yoda
• Ben Franklin's air baths
• Qwerty Stevens
• Barton's horrific odor
• the day Todd died
• the first day of school
• Carter Currency
• Little Sneezer's
• Happy Fam
• filing the first graders into a cage during the Rube Goldberg contest
• the never ending wagon trip across America
• Izak Singer
• cricket sounds
• why?
• Here's the dil (Gary: "Dilemma")
• In the meantime, in the inbetween time
• You just need a little more time to cook
• The Birthday Committee
• The Children of America
• kicking exercises
• Griffin's hugs
• Brock's water fountains
• sticks of kismet and destiny
• Jen Snodgrass
• the sound of happiness
• fire drill karate lessons
• Jammin' Minutes
• the stalkers outside the door (oh, how they wish they would have been in my class!)
• air knucks
• the stopwatch game
• the Game of Sum
• exponent ball
• recess buddies
• sign out sheets
• Brock rebounding for me when I'd miss the trash can
• my dull reading voice
• oxygen-giving cat ("Suck on my nose")
• the dance party
• the spider nest above Blake's head
• dog crumbs
• the TV problems
• Babies, Babies
• Poison Girls (boys and girls)
  
• Super Dinosaur
• stories from Camp Tecumseh
• owl pellets
• comic books
• Andrew's box
• chihuahua wearing a taco
• book club
• floor corn
• Patrick Gass
  
• I'm looking for a class
• Many, many more...
  

I miss you guys already. Thank you for such a great year.

Penultimate

Today we had a dance party, exchanged stories of personal horrific accidents, and the kids wrote some of the nicest little messages to each other. They'll all get them tomorrow, but they're really in for a treat.

Remember: Bring in a grocery sack tomorrow for all the desk stuff.

Words of Warning

Real quick announcement: I told the kiddos that they do have one assignment for tomorrow. They need to have written a one-page letter to my class for next year. I don't care if it's typed or not, I just wanted the kids to provide some insight into my classroom and procedures and some of the fun things we'll be doing next year.

Thanks! The party is in full rage as I type this up.

With Regret

It is with sincere regret that I say that I won't be there for the whole fifth grade party tonight. My plan is to be there until about 4:00 or 4:30, but after that, I am heavily in demand as a tutor! As you can imagine, there are a lot of finals going on this week at the middle school level, including the dreaded two-day final, which starts today and wraps up tomorrow. Right now, leaving at 4:30, I won't be home until 9:30 after all the tutoring, so that's about all I can push it for one night.

I will talk to the kids about this today so that they are aware ahead of time, but I wanted you all to understand that it's not out of a lack of fondness for this class that I'll be leaving early. After all, we still have two days left.

Thanks for understanding.

An Early Summer Night's Comedy

Well, today we went to the Ruth Lilly Center, as you know, and it went pretty well.

Let me say this, though: The boys especially had a lot more questions than boys have ever had in the past. So you mothers and fathers of boys out there...you may want to go over a few questions that I wasn't quite comfortable answering in class when we got back, even if it was with only boys in the room. You never know quite what to answer and what not to, so I'm going to leave some of those questions to you guys. I trust your judgement.

Sketched Out of Nothing

Here's a guideline for these last few days of your fifth graders being at Woodbrook:

TUESDAY: Field trip to the Ruth Lilly Center, bring a sack lunch that can be completely thrown away. Should be fun! Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, like saying the Mojave Desert would be the ideal habitat for a jellyfish.

WEDNESDAY: The Fifth Grade Party during and after school. Now THAT might actually be kind of fun!

THURSDAY: Fairly normal day. We're going to finish up the Lewis and Clark movie that we started today. We'll either do that on Wednesday or Thursday, I'm not quite decided on that one yet. We also have to watch a "moving on" video, and learn to work padlocks.

FRIDAY: Last day! *sniffle* We'll have the talent show in the morning and clean out desks and all that during the remainder of the day.

Hope everyone has a good week. It's going to be a little crazy around here!

Motor City Drift

Today was the Kindy 500, a Woodbrook tradition for many years now. It was fun to see the kindergarteners drift on those bikes and "crash" and have a blast. It was quite an honor that Mr. Z asked members of my class to be the team leaders for the little kids.

We also journaled outside today. The kids were shrunken down to a very small size and asked to wander the "forest" of the front yard of Woodbrook. Of course, being so small, they were only able to wander a very small section of it.

Everyone have a fantastic weekend, and get ready for a wonderful last week of school.

Trust Me, Try This

Cinnamon Chip Scones

by Deb Vogler Klotz

3 C. flour

1/3 C. + 2 tsp. sugar, divided

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 C. (1 and 1/2 sticks) cold butter

1 C. buttermilk

10 oz. package Hershey's cinnamon chips

3 TBSP. melted butter

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Stir together flour, 1/3 C. sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt, in large bowl. Cut butter into 1/2 inch slices; using fingers or pastry blender, mix butter into flour mixture until coarse crumbs form.

3. Add buttermilk; stir with fork just until ingredients are moistened and soft dough forms. Add cinnamon chips.

4. Gather dough into a ball, pressing gently to hold together. Turn out onto slightly floured work surface; knead briefly, about a dozen times. Cut dough in thirds.

5. Roll or pat one piece of dough into a 7-inch circle, 1/2 inch thick. Brush one circle with 1 TBSP melted butter; sprinkle with 1 TBSP sugar. Cut circle into 8 triangles. Place circle on ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat procedure with remaining circles.

6. Bake 10-12 minutes until tops are golden. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Good Monsters

A huge thank you goes out to the Schipp parents, David and Julie, for picking up our pizzas today from Cool River Pizza. They got a little bit of hassle over it during the pick-up, so we really appreciate the effort they put forth today--they even went and got plates for us and ran home to get drinks for people who forgot them.

Guess who else helped out today? Drew Klotz brought in his homemade scones for the class at lunch also. They were absolutely delicious.

We had a false fire alarm pull at the end of the day today. After coming back to the classroom, we had a nice talk about rumors and the silliness that gets started with all of that, and how harmful it can be, even if it happens to be true.

Just then, another teacher walked in and asked if I knew who it was yet, and if I found out, could I please let her and her class know, because they were dying to find out. I said sure. I was so proud of my class when the next thing they said was, "You're not really going to tell them if you find out, are you, Mr. Carter?" They know me so well.

My answer: "Nope."

Relaying the Information

Great minds think alike. Griffin came in this morning with a hand-written note for me to post on the blog about our Relay for Life fundraiser. What was the last thing I had on my list to blog about last night? The fundraiser. What got left off inadvertently? The fundraiser. Here's Griffin's message:

Does your child like video games? Than this announcement is for you. For $25, you can get a 300 minute card to go play at Netheads. All you have to do is give $25 to Griffin Gonzalez or Mr. Carter and we will give $25 to Woodbrook's team for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. Thank you for your attention.

If you don't know, Netheads is a very cool place right here in Carmel. There are computers all over the place, and everyone in your party can play against each other in the game. I was there last spring for a birthday party, and it's one of the coolest places around Carmel, and especially the coolest cyber-cafe I've been to. Admittedly, it's the only one, but I can't imagine that they're all this cool. We've talked about the idea of getting everyone together who buys one in the fifth grade and going to Netheads for an afternoon or evening sometime after school is out.

Morganville

I spotted this guy tonight while I was picking up my White Water Dunk at Cool River. He wasn't wearing a tie, but he did look really busy, so that would have been awfully uncomfortable.

Speaking of Cool River Pizza, though, we are having our pizza party tomorrow (Thursday). If you are free tomorrow at about 12:00, and you are able swing by up there and pick up our pizzas and bring them to us, it would be greatly appreciated. You can even have some pizza with us. Please don't let your own children starve. (Depending on whether your child was good tonight or not, I'm either tugging your heartstrings or tempting you...)

***************************************************************

Sorry, but I'm going to get a little self-indulgent here for a minute. I received a really nice, unintentional compliment from one of the kids today. I handed the kids their final DOL. It was a story about Ben, the sixth grade son, taking a bike ride around the neighborhood at sunset and finally returning home. One of them said, "This is a sad DOL."

"Sad?" I asked. "How is it sad?"

He said, "He'll never see those people and places again."

"Yes he will," I replied, "he lives there."

He answered, "Yeah, but we don't."

Sampled On an Infinite Feedback Loop

Sorry, but here's another infodump on the next few days:

• You should have seen a permission slip come home today for the Ruth Lilly field trip. I told the kids today that it's not that bad, that we learn about nutrition and deodorant and stuff like that, in addition to the "life begins" portion. It's very matter-of-fact, and very plain spoken. And at least they did take me seriously when I told them that if they weren't good, that I would make them sit boy-girl-boy-girl.
  
• Tomorrow is origami day in the library to benefit the Japan victims. Bring a dollar to help fund the relief program, because we will have some special visitors tomorrow in the library. Thanks to Brooke, Andrew, Kate, Rachel, Mona, and Sophia for being randomly picked to go to the library today to help the first graders with their folding skills.
  
• Tomorrow is officially Pizza Party day. I just got off the horn with Mrs. Cox and Mrs. Smith. All taken care of.
  
• Whoops Sheets went home tonight for the Math tests from yesterday. Make sure you look those over and talk with the kids, and make sure also that they can explain to you what they did wrong. If they can't do that, please let me know ASAP.
• Make sure and stop by Cool River Pizza tonight to see 5-1's very own Gary Spencer in action as a bus boy. Don't give him too hard of a time. I will only be stopping in to pick up pizza tonight, but I told him that I hope to see him in his tie running around like a madman, trying to keep up with the workload.
  

Make this an excellent day, everybody!

You See, He Had Other Plans

Mr. Z just came in to let us know that tomorrow there is now a 70% chance of rain. Yikes. Well, the good news is that I made schedules for both rain or shine, so there we go. I told the kids, just wear blue tomorrow no matter what, and they'll be in good shape. Lunch is normal tomorrow, so they don't necessarily need to bring a sack lunch. They can eat the school's hot lunch (hot dogs! woot!) or the other choices available to them (including, ugh, yogurt...).

What a fantastic job our choir members, stage crew, and percussion pounders did this afternoon at the choir show. It was superb. I was extra-happy because we were paid a visit by former Mr. Carter student Luke Bossung, who is now a senior at CHS. He sang a very soulful song for the crowd and I'm sure brought tears to many eyes. He came back to my classroom and marveled at how much it had "shrunken". After he had left, Ethan asked me, "So you like it when your former students come back and visit you?" My answer was an adamant and incredulous yes. As we wind down this school year, I hope all the kids realize this to be fact.

All Points Bulletin

First things first, Ian lost his North Face jacket on the playground! It was left outside at recess, and I told him that I would put out an all points bulletin for it. If you've seen it, or if it ended up in the wrong cubby, or if you think you grabbed the wrong one, please bring it back to school!

I received very nice compliments from my substitute this morning. She said that this was one of her favorite 5th grade classes ever. I told her that they were some pretty great kids.

Homework tonight is Math boxes on page 378 and 2-24, just the even problems on the fair-game review sheet. Also, their 3x each is due tomorrow.

Outside Time Without Extension

Today was a good day for the class. It was full of odds and ends, and a mix of let's-get-this-done stuff and catching-up stuff.

We've been learning about the Constitution and we're getting ready for the Bill of Rights. There is so much more ground I want to cover. I'm afraid you'll have to send your kids to school all summer.

This week we will have our last Spelling list and test and our last DOLs. I'm planning on doing the journals through next week as well as the Words of the Day, in addition to assignments in Science, Social Studies, and Math. There's really no slowing down, and hitting the end is always like hitting a brick wall.

In the end, though, I'm sad to see this year winding down. It's never easy.

Tracking and Fielding

Okay, so I took about four or five more pictures than this, but the program is being stubborn and I gave up on trying. As you can see from these TWO pictures, we had a great Track and Field Day on Friday. I am pleased to report that I didn't hear a word about whose team was winning, and I am happy also to say that this is probably the first year that I didn't have anyone accuse anyone else of cheating or elbowing or anything like that. (If only I could have kept my class from crossing the track DURING the other classes' races...)

Two weeks to go. Hard to believe. It's also hard to believe how much we're going to need to get crammed into those last two weeks. I think we might be almost done with the 7,285 end-of-year assessments/tests, but there is still more left to learn. Believe me, we have to keep going full-throttle until almost the very end.

In addition to the exorbitant amounts of benchmark testing, I will also be out on Tuesday morning. We are supposed to go watch some other teacher teach reading along with our curriculum specialist. I apologize for this, because I realize it's poor planning to do this during the next to last week of school, but we have no choice; it is out of our hands.

Have a great week! More to come...

The Roar of a Gunshot Yet to Be

Today the kids have been very good so far with the hopes of having journal outside. To be honest, I'm not sure how well that is going to work out for today, because all of the choir members are in their outfits and I'm not planning on letting them change again just to ride the bus home. (I'm sure they will think this is unfair, but that's life...full of mean teachers!)

Here's a message from Mrs. Shearman:

Monday, May 16 – Friday, May 20, students will be making paper cranes during library. We are asking for $1.00 donations. Our goal is to raise $1000.00 for the Japanese Relief Fund. Money raised will go directly to the relief fund. Be sure to come by the school on Friday, May 20 to see the display. Parents and students might be interested in reading The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck or Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Sadako Sasaki.

Haven't seen the choir show, but it's bound to be a rollicking time. I know they've been practicing hard for a long time now!

Tomorrow is Track and Field Day. There has been rain in the forecast all week, and it hasn't rained yet, so let's all count on having it tomorrow. Wear BLUE. Have your child be ready for running, hula-hooping, and wacky relaying.

16 Days

first off I like to say thank you to Mrs.Carter, (Mr.Carters mom) saying I hear you like my blog when I write it. Thank you for being so nice to me I hope to see you at Relay For Life.
Also the kids are taking an End Of The Year Assesmement , Trust me its as exciting as it sounds so if you want you can go over it with one of your little angels.You might be wondering why The title of the blog is 16 day, well this is because we only have 16 days left. This is really hard for me, I promiced myself i wouldnt cry JK(just kidding). But yea its truly sad. Well I think Thats it for me t-t-y-l(talk to you later) By Griffin (parentheses explanations by Ethan)

I'll Tip My Hat to the New Constitution

Friday is the last day to turn in order forms for Spring Pictures.

We spent quite a bit of time with the three branches of government and the Constitution today. In fact, we spent a lot more time than I had planned on, but I guess that's the way life is; it often takes us down a different path than what our plan was at first.

Thank you to those of you who came out to Literacy Night last night. We had never done that at Woodbrook before, but I really hope it becomes a new tradition.

To the Max

I had a pretty good from my substitute at the end of today. Enough so that no one is in any real trouble tomorrow, at least. She said she loved my class and asked me if she could sub for me again. However, my class does tend to not like subs and likes to make fun of them when I return. I have to admit, I listen and laugh at their stories. I also have to admit that I'd rather not hear the stories they tell about me!

Congratulations to our very own team To the Max for coming in first runner-up in the Young Hoosier Book Awards contest Battle of the Books. Members of To the Max are: Annie Spangler, Andrew Chen, Ally Langston, Blake Smith, and Lily Wallack. Awesome job, guys!

Pretty Good Shape for the Shape We're In

We've been learning a lot about shapes and solids in math. Today we highlighted the differences between cones, cylinders, pyramids, and prisms.

I will not be in the classroom tomorrow afternoon. I do not know who the substitute will be yet, but I am leaving directions for them with instructions that the kids are to be working quietly. If you have any questions or absence reports after 11:30, please call the front office.

Swiss Time Running Out

First off, a few notes from last week:

I want to give a big thank you to Jill Pitz, Diane Abdellah, and all of the PTO parents who sent in food for the Teacher Appreciation lunch last Friday. It was, as always, a great meal with tons of food--enough to feed an army still, and fifth grade was the last one through the line. Thank you so much!

On Friday, we had a few tests: Social Studies (that was the big one), Spelling, and Caesar's English. Some of the kids opted to take the Caesar's English test today instead, so that one is still dangling.

In the computer lab today, we also had the end of year Reading test. The kids were very cooperative with all of the computer and software malfunctions on this test, and it was left uncompleted by most of the kids. We will be trying to get that made up during the week this week.

Coming up, I believe this week, the kids will be taking a test for the end-of-year assessment for Math. This isn't something they can study for, but I just want them to do their best. We've covered a lot of new ground in Math for these kids this year, and I've been pretty darn pleased with how well they've done.

Thank you to Nick, Ethan, and Izak (from another class) who stayed after and cleaned out Barton's tank on Friday. We waited until after hours so that we could stink up the whole north half of the school in peace. Anyone who happened to still be in the building on that sunny afternoon must have thought we had some pretty bad digestive problems, let's just put it that way.

This week, we will have Track and Field Day on Friday. This tends to be the most dreaded day of the year for my teammates, but I always love it. While some of the kids can get a little overly competitive, I find that at the end of the day, a sense of unity is what it normally brings out in my class. Let's hope that this year the trend continues!

Today we will also be wrapping up The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. To honor the paper Jedi, our very own Drew Klotz brought in some origami creations of his own from home in the form of an origami R2D2 and an origami Stormtrooper. We may just have to make our own origami Yodas sometime this week to celebrate finishing this book.

Happy Monday, folks.

Sustenance

THANK YOU so much for all of the food today! Man, I was inundated with candy bars and cookies and brownies and Power Bars... I'm going to need to do a whole lot of newly-energized karate kicking and chopping if I'm going to work all that off. But you know what, I'm totally willing to do that if it means enjoying everything that you guys brought in to me!

Thanks again, you are all the best.

Old Hat Trick

Tomorrow is a fat test day. The good news is this:

1. One is a Spelling test. As one child said, it is an easy list to spell, but a little difficult with the definitions.
   
2. The big one is a Social Studies test, and it is open-note and open-book and open-white pages. We went over and reviewed today what would be on it, and I feel pretty good that the kids either knew it already, or they have a good idea of what will be on it now.
   
3. One is a test that is optional to take either tomorrow OR on Monday, it will have a word bank, and I will also provide a chance for some extra credit.
   

Tomorrow we will also finish reading The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda. I couldn't stop reading it out loud today because I wanted to see what was going to happen next.

OH, and one thing I wanted to throw in there, just to ease any fears in your kids' hearts and minds...the basic skills test in Math that we worked on for the last couple days... I told them that I couldn't send them to sixth grade no knowing how to subtract, divide, etc. This did not mean that I would be holding anyone back. One kid today thought that was going to happen. No, no, no. I told him that I just wanted to know if they were going to need any instruction on dividing with borrowing, long division, etc. before going on to the middle school. Hope that alleviates any anxiety that was mistakenly tossed out there.

Plus, I give out a hearty review packet to my Math class every year for the summer anyway. So yeah, look forward to that one.

Rebroadcast: Keeping Woodbrook Well-Read

UPDATED TIME BELOW FOR NEXT WEEK...

Save the Date!

Please join us for the first annual Woodbrook Literacy Night! Bring your family and come and join Woodbrook staff as we celebrate the joy of reading with a camping theme! We would like to encourage our boys and girls to continue reading this summer and hope that your family is able to join us for this fun evening! Save the date AND PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CORRECTION: Tuesday, May 10 from 6:30-7:30 PM!

Useful Detritus, Somehow

THANK YOU so much for the school supplies today! You people are so amazing. I love this job every day, and people like you are the reason. Thank you thank you thank you.

A few tidbits here:

• The kids should have their hardback book for Math at home with them tonight. They have an assignment involving shape terminology and they will need to have it with them to check a couple definitions. One student asked if it was okay to use the online version of the textbook, and I told them that was fine as well. They have two pages of homework for that due tomorrow.
  
• There is a Math test tomorrow also. This will be a pretty simple test if they know their basics for finding the area of a circle, algebraic expressions (I told them that part will be partially matching), finding the circumference of a circle, radius vs. diameter, and finding simple unit rates. I realize that this is a bit of a mixed-up chapter, and that's why I'm making this test fairly easy.
  
• Meaning Exercise is due tomorrow!
  
• In Reading today, we read a story called June 29, 1999 by David Weisner. It's an excellent story about giant vegetables. I read them a couple of other Weisner books after that, just because I had almost forgotten about him. Here's one of his illustrations:

Past Due Amount

Just a heads up, parents, we've had an awful lot of late papers recently. There is a handful of students who are "repeat offenders" in the category of "I left it at home on my kitchen table..." I've told them many times, even if your parents check your homework, it is still the student's responsibility to put it into their backpack. There are quite a few grades that could be a little bit higher if only the work was turned in on time.

Thank you for your attention!

I Told Myself I Wasn't Going to Cry

...and thanks to you guys, I didn't! Thanks for being respectful of my allergies.

Oh, wow, you guys...Thank you so much for the "flowers" today--not a single living flower, thankfully, entered this room today. Walking out of these doors, however, my head filled up with all kinds stuff that I don't even want to think about, so I've spent most of today within the confines of 5-1. I truly appreciate the balloons, pictures, the food, and most of all, the letters written by your kids. You guys have all made this a wonderful year, which still isn't over.

We really did have a great day today. Tomorrow will hopefully be even better.

Be on the lookout tomorrow for some Track and Field day information: coming right up next Friday, May 13. Our color is BLUE.

Jars

Here's a message from two fifth grade parents that I've been asked to send along to you all...

Dear Parent(s) of 5th graders,

The end is in sight! Only 20 more days left of school and middle school is right around the corner! I don't know whether to be overjoyed or overwhelmed.

Kelly Lawrence and I are taking care of prizes/giveaways for the 5th grade party which will be May 25 from 1 - 5pm. The students will have an opportunity to win centerpieces through a raffle. Yes I said a centerpiece. :) Let me explain. We have about 14 jars about the size of a 5-pound bag of sugar. We are hoping families of 5th graders will sponsor a jar by decorating it and filling it with whatever you think a 5th grader would love to win (i.e. candy, gift cards, Clay spirit wear, etc. you are free to think outside the box and solicit businesses). These jars, once decorated and filled, will be used as centerpieces for the tables during the party and ultimately as prizes. If you are interested in creating a "centerpiece" please email Kelly Lawrence or myself and we will get you a jar as soon as possible. Thanks!

Shelley Arnold and Kelly Lawrence

Monday Mourning

Obituary: Todd the Turtle, 2010-2011

We would like to mark the passing of our little turtle friend, Todd, yesterday. Todd quietly merged with the infinite sometime over the weekend, where he was discovered Sunday on top of the white steps in his tank, his favorite spot.

Todd was a good turtle. He liked to swim and play. I buried him, and I'm sure he's happy now. He was a very nice turtle, and so we can be sure he will never be running into Osama in the afterlife.

Todd is survived by Barton the Turtle.

So long, tiny friend!

It Never Was a Formula

First of all, a huge thank you to to all of the kids who brought me a "high five" this morning (or last week; thanks, Andrew!). Those things mean a lot more to me than you know, and their messages almost brought a tear to my eye. Thank you so much--seriously, you have no idea.

Here's our spelling list for this week. Evidently we were having technical problems this afternoon and they wouldn't print off:

1. quarrel

2. turbulent

3. proclaim

4. radiant

5. trestle

6. maintain

7. forage

8. scavenge

9. comprehend

10. influence

11. condemn

12. deplete

As always, their definitions are due tomorrow, so grab that dictionary. And yes, I want them hand-written...I know dictionary.com cut and paste when I see it!

The kids have their "study guides" for Math. Essentially, it's this: 1-14, 21-25 on their homework from tonight, as well as the formula-writing sheet I gave them today. The only other thing on this admittedly-hodgepodge Math test is finding the areas and circumferences of circles.
We will continue to do hardcore review over the next few days.

We are all finished with ISTEP! Perfect attendance this morning allowed us to be completely finished, so stick a fork in it; we're done!

Notes From G-dog

Well I'm back my last blog by me was just before winter break do its nice to be touching the keys once again. The last day of ISTEP was today and it was exciting to be over with.On another note we read a lot of oragami yoda today which is always an exciting tale. We are in a huge rush in getting all the big books done soon ( Social studies, english etc) But I think since Mr.Carter is the BEST TEACHER IN THE WORLD we can get it done. I would really like to thank the 4 teachers that were in the computer lab at the time of the test so thank u for that. Well time for wonderful Pups running bye take it away mr c.