The better you become with the little things, the more confident you will be when you write:

There is a temptation to leave out the academics during the last few days before the long holiday break, but Room 404 continues to blast through skills.  The North Pole Project is a series of activities and projects I've collected, created and tweaked through the years.

In the pictures below, Hoggatteers are working on "simple" linear measurement.  This has been followed by finding the perimeter of the rooms in Santa's house.  Next is finding the area of the same rooms.  These, along with some word skills and rehearsing for tomorrow's big program for the school in the morning and families in the evening, have filled a great deal of our classroom time.

This week we'll continue to work through the project as we deal with whatever else gets thrown our way.

We've done some continued measuring on the critters that grew.  Now that they are out of the water, they have almost shrunk to their original sizes.

Incidentally, Virginia O'Hanlon and Frank Church were real people.  In fact Mr. Church was a Civil War correspondent before answering the letter of an eight-year-old while he worked for his brother at the New York Sun. I'm playing him as the hard-nosed editor, but I'm not clear that he was ever in that role at the Sun. He was not identified as the author until after his death in 1906.  Virginia later became a teacher and a principal. She had one daughter, but was blessed by several grandchildren.

​Virginia O'Hanlon was interviewed on the radio in 1963 (66 years after her letter was answered), and you may listen to her actual voice on the CBC Digital Archives.  She died in 1971 at the age of 81.

The letter itself was appraised on Antiques Roadshow a few years ago.

In a short time, yesterday, the fourth grade classes reflected upon the events of December 7, 1941.  On that date, Japanese planes surprised the U.S. military stationed in Hawaii, especially in a place known as Pearl Harbor.  We investigated some of the unsung and unlikely heroes of that and the following day.  I briefly showed the National Geographic website dedicated to the events at Pearl Harbor, which is definitely worth some of your time.

My daughter traveled to a veterans' home in Mt. Vernon, Missouri, to deliver letters written by Carl Junction students.  Her small, teacher-chosen contingent of students met and spoke with veterans as far back as the second World War.  Students shook hands with and hugged the residents of the home, while talking to them and showing appreciation for their sacrifices.

History isn't always as distant as we think.  It's hard to believe the last Civil War veteran died just six years before I was born.  All in all, there have not been an exhaustive number of generations since the birth of our nation, 239 years ago.  There will be a time, when the children of some of the up-and-coming kids of today may realize that their parents lived on the same planet, at the same time, as soldiers who fought the battles of World War 2.

I am happy to foster an appreciation for our military men and women.  Agree or disagree with the wars they fought (or events that occur during peace time), we can assuredly agree that their service was a personal and familial sacrifice.

Improve your writing:

While we're working on a holiday program, singing holiday songs (using lyric videos to emphasize reading fluency), and doing holiday activities, you can rest assured we are not shrugging the academics and standards.  We're working through Math, Language, and Writing activities during these three weeks before Christmas.  If they're not careful, they might even learn something new.

Practice with some of this type of problem, and you could go far>

Parents, please remember our upcoming Christmas program, Jingle Bell Jukebox, on Monday, December 14.  Students will perform for the student body, during school on that day, and reprise their performance in the evening for friends and family.  Ms. Shurley, our music instructor, has asked for girls to dress in poodle skirts and plain blouses (if possible), with black shoes (no sandals).  Boys are requested to be in jeans and white t-shirts, with black leather jackets (if available) and Converse-style shoes.

We have very little time to rehearse for this program.  Classroom teachers are doing our part by setting the stage in the meantime.  We began rehearsing on the stage yesterday and almost completely blocked the performance with all students.  After school, we continued to work on decor and special effects for the program, in hopes of creating the best program possible in the little time we have.