It is time to get those creative juices going again! Mrs. McBride is offering another opportunity to put your skills to work. Find out more details for this month’s challenge here – The Gummy Bear Challenge.

April is blue for respect. Cottage Lane’s book of the month, Pinduli, is a surprising story about self-image, self-acceptance, and treating others with respect. After reading, sharing and discussing this special book you will realize how a few tiny words – bad or good – can create something enormous!

Do you think that by hurting someone else’s feelings it made the animals who made Pinduli feel bad, feel better about themselves?

The Iditarod is underway. It is called the “Last Great Race on Earth” for a good reason. This sled dog race starts in Anchorage, Alaska and ends over 1,000 miles away in Nome.

As of today, the musher, Brent Sass, is in first place. Try this game the Serum Run Game to see if you could survive the journey. If you want to learn more about the Iditarod, visit Mrs. McBride’s website, Iditarod 2016.

 We learned about bird migration and tracking Robins all over North America.

Today is March 2nd, Dr. Seuss’ birthday!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more things you learn, the more places you’ll go.” ~ Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You Go

Keep reading non-fiction texts! Post something knew you learned from your reading and include the title of the book. We can all learn more together.

Challenge: Head over to Mrs. McBride’s website for another challenge, Dr. Seuss Trailer Challenge.

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.” Watch Integrity video and What would you do? 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.

Thirty days have September,
April, June, and November;
Thirty-one the others date,
Except in February, twenty-eight;
But in leap year we assign
February, twenty-nine.

So, what do we do with all of those 1/4 days? We add a day in a leap year! The extra day is added to the end of February. It becomes February 29. It’s called leap day!

Math Rules for Leap Years

Which years are leap years? Here are three simple rules for determining the leap years.

1. Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year
2. But every year divisible by 100 is NOT a leap year
3. Unless the year is also divisible by 400, then it is still a leap year.

Leap-Year Math Quiz

1. List the next five leap years after 2012:
2. Sara was born in 1988. What was the first leap year during her lifetime?
3. Circle the years that were leap years: 1900, 1972, 1956, 1946, 1992, 1886, 1420, 1600
4. List the next five century leap years:
5. The day of the week that a date falls on usually skips forward one day the following year. January 1, 2011, was a Saturday; January 1, 2012, was a Sunday. But if there’s a February 29 between the two dates, the day of the week “leaps” forward an extra day: January 1, 2013, will be on a Tuesday (instead of Monday). On which day will January 1 fall in…
   • a. 2014?
   • b. 2017?

BONUS: A leap year occurs every four years. Based on that information, about how many hours longer than 365 days do you think it takes Earth to revolve around the sun?

It is time to get those creative juices going again! Mrs. McBride is offering another opportunity to put your designing skills to work. Find out more details for this month’s challenge here – The Valentine Challenge.

This month at Cottage Lane we are focusing on compassion. “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~ Dalai Lama 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 will encourage us to perform random acts of compassion. From the Buddy Bench to Jump Rope for Heart, 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.