Three Pinewood teachers; Amanda Roper, Jane Essenburg, and Amanda Smith worked with Pinewood students last week in a problem based summer school program through our Ottawa County Intermediate School District, Sundae School.  Teams of students from across the county worked at local ice cream shops doing market research on what makes the best sundae.  Students interviewed shop owners, family members, and people from the community to help them design and create the most marketable sundae.

On Thursday all of the teams from across the county came together to compete in a delicious afternoon of sundae tasting and display.  Students had to work together in teams to assemble over 100 mini sundaes and they worked on their marketing with their display.  Students all greeted judges and taste testers answering questions about their sundae and the process their teams used to come up with their creative ideas.  It was an awesome learning experience for students and staff.

Country Sundae Team

Getting the Bee Hive Sundae’s ready

Assembly

Pinewood students do you think we can get Pinewood to 1 million minutes of reading this summer?  I have a math problem I need some help on.  If we have 370 Pinewood students, 11 weeks of summer left and already have 34,000 minutes read how many minutes more does each student need to read to get to 1 million?  How many minutes a week is that?  If you figure out the problem please comment below.  And don’t forget to continue to log and track your minutes on the Scholastic website. Currently Pinewood is 462 and we would love to move ahead in the national rankings and see our reading minutes soar.

As we continue our focus on summer learning, this week I’m excited to share some fun book recommendations that you can read to help us get to 1 million minutes.  Last we I shared some great online sites for summer learning, if you didn’t get a chance to see that post just scroll back on the blog the resources are great to keep your students engaged in their summer learning.

What books have you read that you love and would recommend? Here are a couple of books our new 6^th grade teacher Gabe Steward encourages students to take a look at. All the books we are recommending you can find at your local library, bookstore, or on Amazon.

BFG

The BFG

Holes

I like the book “Holes” because it shows how someone can take a bad situation and bad luck and turn it into a positive.  I like how the author takes two stories, one from the past and one from the present, and connects them into one story.  And besides, who doesn’t like digging holes?

Holes

Here are a few books that I love.

Pete the Cat

Pete the Cat is a great book series for lower elementary students.  Pete is always having a good time no matter where he is at and there are many books in his series for students to enjoy.

Pete Rocking

The Indian in the Cupboard

Have your ever imagined that your toys could come to life?  The Indian in the cupboard takes you into the world of one little boy who discovered how to make his play figures come to life.  You will love this adventure and the great relationship that develops between the main characters.

The Indian in the Cupboard

However your child wants to read, we don’t care, just as long as they read:)

Thank you so much for taking time to visit the blog and continue to be involved in our Pinewood community during the summer.  Please take time to log your students summer reading we would love to help Scholastic break the world record and be one of the top reading schools in the nation.

Has it started yet?  Has your child ran out of things to read, or complained they can not find anything they like.  This post is full of great resources for all age levels that will help stop the I’m bored comments in their tracks.  Last week I shared information on the blog about how important it is for children to continue to read during the summer.  I shared research on how much a child can benefit from just devoting 15 minutes a day to reading, math, and writing.  As an educator and as a mom I’m working hard to find great resources to keep summer learning fun and engaging.  This week I would like to share some great resources to help your child enjoy their learning time each day.

In Jenison we are lucky to have quality public libraries full of books, videos, and fun summer programs for children that are close by.

Georgetown library, Grandville library, and Hudsonville library are all close and have multiple free events that are fun for the whole family.  You can find more information about each library here on their web pages.

Georgetown Library

Grandville Library

Hudsonville Gary Byker Memorial Library

Students can access many resources from any sort of internet device.

If you are looking for easy and quick websites that are safe for kids and have great learning opportunities please review the list below.  I’m sure you will find many your child will enjoy and will actually probably be so interested they will surpass that 15 minutes without even realizing it.

https://newsela.com/

This is a website full of current events and news stories that are perfect for kids.  The site allows you to change the reading level to make it “just right” for your child and also has questions at the end of the articles to help children practice comprehension.  I love this site because I often learn new things as well from the articles.

http://tweentribune.com/

This website is very similar to newsela, it is full of informational text and engaging articles.  Students can search for topics that are interesting to them and have a large variety of reading topics.

http://www.tumblebooklibrary.com/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f

Tumble books is an online library that has both fiction and non-fiction books the site does require a log on which is jenison, and a password which is wcats.

http://essenburg.weebly.com/symbaloo.html

This is a symbaloo Mrs. Essenburg has on her class website that is full of links to various learning sites and productivity tools.  Take some time to explore it, you will find some great resources.

http://jps-elementary.weebly.com/

This is our Jenison elementary web page.  If you click on the fun link there is a great variety of web resources that help your child with everything from keyboarding to internet safety.

http://stayathomemoms.about.com/od/educational-activities/tp/20-Educational-Websites-For-Kids.htm

I took time to look through all of the sites on this article and it is full of some really good ones.  My favorite was the How Stuff Works page kids can investigate anything from do animals laugh to is moldy food safe to eat.  I would recommend parent supervision on this page there is a large variety of topics.

https://www.prodigygame.com/

Prodigy is a fun interactive math game that combines fantasy with math skills.  Student go on quests fighting dragons and multiplication.

http://www.scholastic.com/ups/campaigns/src-2015/kids

And finally our summer reading page has lots of tools for students.  There are short stories by top authors, fun quizzes, and many other areas to explore.  We are currently 454th in the nation, let’s work together to move ahead keep logging those minutes.

At Pinewood our students worked so hard this year on achieving their learning goals and working towards academic success.  Research shows that students can experience a summer slide, which is a learning loss.  That summer slide could be up to a 22% loss of achievement.  Students can prevent or reduce that summer loss with participating in daily reading and learning activities.  why-cant-I-skip-reading(1)

We want our students to have an amazing summer full of fun and adventure.  Reading can be a key piece to that fun and adventure.  Students can go anywhere in a book.  We also value our students time with their families and our focus is on 15 minutes of reading, 15 minutes of math, and 15 minutes of writing 5 times a week.  That may seem like a lot but its only 45 minutes a day, which leaves 8-10 hours for family fun, outdoor play, swimming, bike riding, exploring everyday!!!!  We believe that each of those activities are just as important.

As a principal my words of encouragement to families is to make reading fun! Find topics your student is interested in, take trips to the library or book store, read with your child, don’t look at this as a chore but instead make it a highlight of your day.

Why Summer Reading is Important!