Student Blogs are here!

In case you haven’t been to the Student Blog section of Classroom2kids under “Our Class“, we would like to announce that the STUDENT BLOGS are now in action!  The big “announcement” was supposed to come with the completion of our KidPix 4 Seasons Tree slideshows, but Mrs. B. ran into a computer glitch!  Kidpix slideshows have to be converted into QuickTime movies in order to be shown on the Edublog. The student blogs from last year had Kidpix slideshows but this year the computer just wouildn’t seem to comply!  Mrs. B. tried it in the computer lab, on her classroom laptop, and even at home!  In the end (happy ending!) Mrs. B. found there is only one way the conversion seems to work… if she converts the student slideshows in the computer lab AND saves them to her teacher account.  Computers are SO finicky, aren’t they!

So… after all that hard work by the students AND Mrs. B., we hope you will visit our student blogs and leave a comment for them!

Student Blogs 2012-13

 

Happy Summer Holidays… Part 1!

We are now on our “official Summer Holidays” but Mrs. B. has not finished with the Classroom2Kids Edublog yet!  (Mrs. B. hasn’t even finished dismantling the classroom either!  Oh dear!)

Her first project was to upload the “almost finished” Butterfly Life Cycle slideshows on the Student Blogs. Hurray! You will now find them uploaded!

https://classroom2kids.edublogs.org/about/student-blogs-classroom2kids/

A new addition for this year is the INVITATION to BLOG OVER THE SUMMER!  I think it would be a great way for the class to keep in touch, so I am inviting you all to tell us what you are doing on your holidays!  You can make comments to your classmates and even add photos… (but remember… no closeup photos of you in your own blog because it’s not “web smart” for students to put their photo in a place that also has their name!)

I’m hoping to READ some GREAT BLOGS over the summer!

Be watching too… I will be uploading some slideshows of the Year End Stuffie picnic,  Butterfly Freedom Day, and the Gr. 2 Year End Bubble Bonanza!  (Be patient… I need a wee rest too!)

xox Mrs. Boekhout
 

 

A visit from Mr. Davo Devil

Tasmanian Devil seen at Nestor School!

We had an unusual visitor from “Down Under” on Monday! It was Mr. Davo Devil from Australia! He was actually visiting Mrs. Nielsen’s class, but she just KNEW that Monty Moose would like to meet him. What Mrs. Nielsen did not know, was that Wilbur Wombat was at Mrs. Boekhout’s house, just waiting to be sent back home to Australia. Davo and Wilbur had an emotional conversation about their beloved homeland, Australia!

We didn’t have time to show Davo all around the class, but we DID take him on a very special walk… our “Tracking Trash” walk to clean up the school for Earth Week and collect some real DATA on what kind of garbage is polluting our school grounds! Davo was a BIG help!

Davo and Mrs. Boekhout made a little slide show of his visit, which you can see on DAVO’s BLOG!!! 

http://mrdevil.edublogs.org/

Here are a few of the photos we took.

 

Congratulations to Mrs. Yollis, Winner of the “Class Blog” Eddy!

I had a FANTASTIC time at school this evening, between 4:00 and 5:30pm, participating in an “Online Blackboard” ceremony of the Eddy Awards!  There were over 115 teachers from ALL AROUND THE WORLD typing messages in real time, talking over microphones, and watching the results as they happened “live”.   I even got to e-meet some of the teachers I have links to! There were teachers from Canada, USA, Europe, South America, Australia and more!  For some of those teachers, it was the middle of the night, and others had their students listening at school!

A HUGE congratulations to Mrs. Yollis for winning the Class Blog Award… she certainly deserves it!  I have learned a lot about creating blogs by reading her inspirational posts and using her guidelines and suggestions.  Mrs. Yollis also won the “Most Influential Blog” award!  

Although Classroom2Kids didn’t win, I am SO proud to have made it to the Edublog-selected nominations.  I am especially proud, considering the other amazing Class Blogs that were nominated. Thank you to EVERYONE who voted for us!

THANK YOU, EDUBLOGS!
YOU ARE A WONDERFUL ADDITION TO OUR LEARNING!

“Eddies” nomination for Classroom2Kids!

A big THANK YOU to Mrs. Nielsen for nominating our Classroom2Kids Edublog for an “Eddy” award! We feel honored!  You can vote for us  by selecting “Best Class Blog” and then “Classroom 2 Kids”.   BTW, it seems that we are especially honored because we were shortlisted into the actual voting selection! 

EDUBLOG  QUOTE: Each year there are more and more nominations, and of increasing excellent quality, reflecting the ever growing edublogosphere — nice work guys!Unfortunately we can’t list every single nomination in each category — that’s too overwhelming for everyone. Instead, our intrepid team of judges combed through hundreds of nominated sites to whittle them down to a manageable number of shortlisted nominations for each category.

 

Here is Mrs. Nielsen’s nomination: 
http://lynnenielsen.edublogs.org/2011/12/09/vote-for-mrs-boekhouts-classroom2kids/

 Note: You can only vote once per IP address (that means, only once per computer).  Extra votes from the same computer are deleted.

Wish us luck… and VOTE!

 

Students Upload Their Own Posts!

Our “Dear Santa” letters had a special excitement to them, because the students uploaded their posts almost completely on their own for the first time!  Here’s what they did:

-Wrote to Santa in MSWord
-Learned how to login to their blogs with their usernames & passwords
-Activated “Easy Mode” (what a fantastic option!)
-Put in the title and copy/pasted their MSWord document
-Checked off “Blogging” as a Category and checked “Publish”

Then…
-Created a picture of Santa in KidPix, printed out as an outline to color
-Filled in the color on the computer in “Todd Parr” style
-Saved the picture and then also exported the picture as a jpeg
-Went back to their blogs and uploaded the jpeg into their Dear Santa post

Personally, I think it is AMAZING
I am SO PROUD of my Classroom2Kids Bloggers!

You can find our Student Blogs are located in a separate tab under the “About Our Class”, or you can just “CLICK HERE“.

The next step will be…
to upload a post FROM HOME! WOW!

 

Our first week at school

Our first full week back at school after the summer holidays was a WHIRLWIND of a week!  There were so many “FIRSTS“!  We had our first pets arrive, our first Special Helper, first Spelling Test, Newsletter, gym & music & library times, Primary Sing-Along (Mrs. B. got to lead the songs), first rainy day inside (can you believe it…what fun!), first computer times in the lab and first turns on the two classroom computers, first video in the classroom (on hamster care!), first intro to birds that might come to our birdfeeder, first classroom Post Office mail delivery, first “Just Right Reading” book bags and first “shared reading” with the stuffies, first calendar and “Clues and Questions” activities led by the Special Helper, first “Class Meetings“, first Brain Gym exercises and first Gratitude Stone sharing… and even MORE!

 Here are some of the things we thought were really special:

Eric- I was the Special Helper today, so I got to lead the calendar.

Megan J. – We did short vowel a on the classroom computers.

Hayden Y. – We went to gym with Mr. Della Vedova on Wednesday.

Hayden M. – We had our first time at Just Right Reading with our new book bags.

Dennis – It’s our first time getting BUG tickets. Being Unusually Good

Keegan – We got to play with lego on an inside rainy day.

Shay – My Nana is an ornithologist. At school we are putting up bird feeders.

Alina – We studied birds today.

Bryan – We are having our first birthday… Jayde’s!

Dennis – We had our second Sing-Along and our first DRAMA!

Megan J. – We had our first Spelling Test.

Amanda – We have LOTS of books in our classroom.

Mattias- We have pets. The hamster came first and a gecko came second.  We don’t know what else is coming!

William – Today we started a new novel, “Class Pets: Ghost of PS 42” by Frank Asch.

Jadye-  Hannah was the recorder for the Special Helper today.

Hannah – I am happy that I get to play with Alina.

Meghan L. – We write the weather down every day.

Dylan – We have stuffies that have been all around the world.

Jesse – Lots of people got mail in their classroom mailboxes!

Alyssa – Oh dear, Alyssa was sick today!

Kendon – He was away visiting his brother who is home from Afganistan.

Mrs. Boekhout – She is EXCITED that we are starting our FIRST BLOG already!!!

We hope YOUR FIRST WEEK back at school
was as exciting as ours!

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Happy New Year 2011!

We’d like to wish everyone a wonderful 2011!  There’s sure to be lots happening!

Newyear

Our first big excitement is that Monty Moose is off traveling AGAIN!  He is going to be spending a few weeks in Mumbai, India!  This time he is going to be helping “Aunt Rosemary” teach quilting and other crafts to Indian ladies improving their lives by starting their own businesses!  That’s something pretty new for Monty, I’m not sure he even knows how to sew!!!  We hope he sends some good photos!

Speaking of photos… we now have our Christmas photos uploaded to our website.  We had the local Fire Fighters visit our school and make us pancakes… yum!   The PAC set up a wonderful Craft Fair so that we could buy secret presents for our families.  We made beautiful Yule Log Centerpieces as our gift to our families.  Whew!  It was a busy time!

If you would like to see the full set of photos, you will have to ask us for our password.

http://www.teacherwebshelf.com/boekhout/activities.htm

We’d love to share them with friends, relatives, and other classrooms… but just not “the whole world”!!!