Now try these shapes…Four Piece Tangram Puzzles

The Iditarod has been called the “Last Great Race on Earth” for a good reason.  It is a sled dog race that starts in Anchorage, Alaska and ends over 1,000 miles away in Nome.  The landscape is treacherous, and the weather is unforgiving. This race serves to memorialize all the things sled dogs have done in history and for the people of Alaska, but part of the trail raced today is the historical trail mushers used to bring life-saving medicine to Nome during an epidemic of diphtheria in 1925.

View:

• The Last Great Race,
• What is the Iditarod? and
• Inside the Iditarod.

Select a musher that you believe will win.  Leave a comment with his/her name on this blog.  If someone already chose that musher, you must select a different one.  The fastest time of all the mushers selected will win a prize. Good Luck, Mushers!

Play the Serum Run Game.

Additional Resources:

• If you are interested in learning about the dogs used to pull the sleds over the 1100 mile Iditarod course, check out the American Kennel Club and find out more information about Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies.
• Scholastic Iditarod resources include information on the history of the race and history of Alaska in general.

The tangram is a puzzle consisting of seven flat shapes, called tans, which are put together to form shapes. The objective of the puzzle is to form a specific shape (given only an outline or silhouette) using all seven pieces, which may not overlap. It is one of the most popular puzzles in the world. Tangrams are an excellent way to increase mental and visual skills.

How to make your own…

Try these tangram puzzles online.

Green with Integrity!

• Integrity is the quality of being honest, having strong moral principles and total sincerity.
• Honesty is often viewed as saying the right thing and integrity is doing the right thing.
• Oprah Winfrey states, “Real integrity is doing the right thin knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”

Read and listen to our book of the month, Mr. Peabody’s Apples.

In the story, Tommy realizes the damage he has caused to Mr. Peabody.  He says, “I have a lot of work to do.” Pretend you are Tommy and write an apology to Mr. Peabody which explains how Tommy plans to amend what he has done.

A Found Poem is where you borrow, or “rent” an author’s words from a song, poem, or book, and create your own poem.

The awesome thing about found poetry is that there are no rules.  Found poems take existing texts and refashion them and present them as poems.  (Example)

Remember to:

• Read the excerpt from your chapter.
• Look for the beautiful language.
• Think about the message you want to convey about your story.
• Highlight words or phrases that you might want.
• Record these words on your Found Poem planning page.
• Rearrange your words to convey a message in a poem.
• Add your poem to this blog post.

Rosa’s birthday is February 4th.  She would have been 106 years old.

Read more:

• Rosa Parks: How I Fought for Civil Rights is from Scholastic.
• Remembering Rosa Parks is from TIME for Kids.
• Rosa Parks Facts Website

What is something you would stand up for?

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~ Dalai Lama

This month at Cottage Lane we are focusing on compassion. At today’s assembly, we discussed the meaning of compassion and how we can show compassion in school, at home and in the world.  Our Compassion Cards encourage us to perform random acts of compassion.  From the Smile Train Fundraiser to Valentine’s for Veterans, our compassion can make a difference in the lives of others.

Our book of the month, Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson, gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world. The main character realizes the lost opportunity for friendship and thinks about how much better it could have been if a little compassion was shown toward others.

Remember…Don’t be a wrinkle in someone else’s heart.  Instead…make time this month to complete your compassion cards.  Together we can fill our hallway heart!

Do you know that if you read for 14.2 minutes per day, you will be exposed to 1,146,000 words per year?

Challenges:

• PARP for the next chapter of Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.
• Play Free Rice the super popular vocabulary game that donates rice for every correct answer.
• Check out Mrs. McBride’s monthly challenge, The Valentine Challenge!

Last week, Alfred K. Newman, one of the last of the Navajo Code Talkers, died in New Mexico at age 94.  Here is his story, Alfred Newman.

About a year ago, President Trump honored Code Talkers at the White House. The Navajo Code Talkers used their native language to invent a secret military code. Their Navajo language was tricky and was not written down. So the US Marines recruited them to help transmit information. They created more than 200 new Navajo words for military terms and committed them to memory. “I studied on my own at night,” Joe Hosteen Kellwood, one of the code talkers, said of his training. “You had to memorize all the words at the time, 211 words. They were long words. I spelled it. I learned.”The code was vital to the US victory in the Pacific in World War II. The Navajo code proved much faster than the encrypting machines being used at the time. You can read more about the Navajo Code Talkers here.

We can a learn a lot about perseverance from Martin Luther King, Jr. On Monday, January 21st we observe his birthday and honor all of his accomplishments. Listen to Kid President’s video on how King taught us that things won’t always be awesome, but your response can be.

Remember, things don’t always have to be they are. We can change them! Kids can change them.

Let’s use a creative form of poetry, Blackout Poetry, to share our own message of hope and perseverance with MLK: An American Leader.  For homework, post your poem to this blog.

Challenges:

• Post your poem to this blog.
• Here is a Martin Luther King, Jr. Internet scavenger hunt. Information is from the official U.S. Government website on Martin Luther King, Jr.