Great Holiday Reads

The holiday season is upon us, and during this sometimes hectic time, there is nothing like taking a few minutes away from all the hustle and bustle to sit together and enjoy a great story.

Here are some great ideas for holiday reading:

1.  The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore- the poem we all know and love so much comes alive with Jan Brett's amazing illustrations!

2. Dream Snow by Eric Carle

3. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson- you may have read this when you were a kid!
This classic story shows us what happens when the six not so well behaved Herdman kids take over the church pageant and reinterpret the story of Christmas, with some crazy, funny, and sometimes profound surprises.

4.  Lil Rabbit's Kwanzaa- Brer Rabbit meets African tradition as a little rabbit tries to find a gift to bring his grandfather for Karamu, the Kwanzaa feast.

5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas- Who would ever steal Christmas? The Grinch, that's who! Your heart may grow three sizes too when you share this Dr. Seuss classic with your family.

6. Olivia Helps with Christmas by Ian Falconer- Olivia, our favorite piglet, helps out with Christmas as only she can.  The great black and white illustrations- with pops of holiday green and red- really help tell the story!

7. Happy Hanukkah, Corduroy! The sweet bear in overalls introduces young readers to the sacred traditions of the Festival of Lights.

8.  Olive, The Other Reindeer by Vivian Walsh- When Olive the Dog hears the song about the "other reindeer," she thinks she is the other reindeer and heads to the North Pole to try to join Santa's team.  As you might imagine, hilarity ensues.

9. The Kvetch Who Stole Hanukkah by Bill Bertle- A Grinch-like grump who tries to steal Hanukkah learns the true meaning of the holiday.

10. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg- Hop on the night train to go visit Santa in this magical holiday classic.


Happy Holidays, and Happy Reading!

Hour of Code

Students at Pine Glen, and thousands more around the world have been actively participating in the Hour of Code this week.  Coding promotes logical thinking and students' abilities to translate their thinking into step by step directions.   Take a look at our students coding and visit the Hour of Code website to give coding a try.  http://hourofcode.com/us.

Third Graders Evaluate Their Character Traits

Mrs. Lynch's third grade students did some self-reflecting last week to determine their individual character traits.  Once building a list of traits, students were challenged with rating those traits in order to rank them from most predominant to least.  Next, they brought that data to the computer lab, and with the use of the website, abcya's word cloud for kids they transformed their data into a word cloud.  A word cloud is a graphical representation of word frequency.  Abcya's word cloud for kids displays those words typed most often as the largest in the word cloud.  This lesson incorporated navigating an internet website, keyboarding, spell checking, mouse skills, cutting and pasting techniques, being creative when designing the word cloud, and printing.  Take a look at our students' impressive character traits!

Welcome Miss Carney, Our New Pine Glen Librarian

Miss Megan Carney, Librarian

Pine Glen Elementary School has a new librarian!  We are proud to welcome Miss Megan Carney to our school.  Miss Carney has been a librarian for the past thirteen years and brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and excitement to Pine Glen.  She loves reading, following all Boston sports teams, and spending time with her friends and family, especially her adorable nephew Zachary.  Please stop by and introduce yourself, she is looking forward to meeting you.