Summer is good time to instill lifetime habbits. One of those all important habits is keeping your child invested in reading. It has been researched and proven that children who read during the summer have a head start over others when fall rolls around and school begins. Take time to check out our local library, join summer reading clubs, and find a fun book to read together. This is such a valuable asset to our community of learning at MRA.
Your child should come home this week with their Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge packet. It includes a letter explaining the program and your child's username and password to keep track of minutes read this summer. They have the opportunity to unlock prizes and other activities.
The Alder and Cedars have compiled a list of their favorite books. Along with some teacher recommendations we are encouraging them to read five or more books this summer. We would love your help in encouraging our young adults to continue to read.
Trillium have been learning the difference between fiction and nonfiction texts. We are discovering that a proper definition of a fiction book is more then "not real". Fiction stories are ideas that come from an author's imagination. Nonfiction books are books that give us information and facts about a subject we may want to learn more about. Our purpose to read fiction books is for entertainment and our purpose to read nonfiction is to learn. We have been reading books about chickens, eggs, elephants, and more and putting them into the correct genre. Including this delightful story about an unlikely friendship built between elephant and dog.
The Huckleberry classes have been reading the folktales of Stone Soup. We have learned that this fun tale came first from France and then has spread across the world in it's many different versions. We have planted our very own stone soup garden in the school garden and can't wait to try our hand at creating our own stone soup recipe.
The Clarkia have been looking into Native American heroes under the biography genre. We have read some heart-touching stories of real Native American's that have overcome great odds to make a difference in our world. "Saltypie" is a story told by a Choctaw woman's grandson on how she overcame being different not only by skin color but blindness. Her determination to never give up inspired the story Tim Tingle wrote. We also read a few stories about the residence boarding schools that many of Native American children were sent to and how these children tried to hold on to the memories of their tribes and traditions.
