Fun Camps 2013

Instead to teaching summer school this year, I decided to lead some Fun Camps.  This week is Jr. Programming.  I have four very enthusiastic boys working with Scratch.  The first time I saw Scratch and moved the little cat around I wasn't too impressed.  Then I saw a program that someone had done that played "Frere Jacques" in a four-part round. This was so different from moving a cat that I had to give Scratch a second look.
It is easy to get started, but can get difficult and complicated quickly.  We are working on a MiniMario game from ScratchED.

March Madness may still be going on for basketball fans, but for me it is over. March started out with Read Across America. We had four special readers from the Chadron State College football team. Students and readers alike enjoyed the afternoon. Click here and read more and see the pictures.

The next week was our Conference Quiz Bowl tournament. We had two high school teams and one middle school team. We didn't win, but they participated and let everyone know our six return students were going to tough competitors. The high point of the day was Regg making the All-Conference team. The middle schoolers went to a middle school only competition the next week. We were definitely the underdogs. Our two teams together were outnumbered by one from most of the other schools.

Then came end of the quarter, Parent-Teacher conferences, and the book fair. The book fair went GREAT.

The highlight for the month was the arrival of my diploma. YEAH! My Master in Education from Lesley University.

Tried out Picture Trail again. This is as close as I will get to a plasma screen TV.

This looked like an interesting site with many possibilities. I first thought of using it to create a timeline of a person's life or a family timeline. Then I thought about adding in local, national, and world events. This is just a brief idea using my father and his life and a few events that occurred during his life. http://timeglider.com/t/80bea87c005d8ab9?min_zoom=25&max_zoom=50

Clara's mother took pictures every month for the first year with Clara, a string of pearls and her blue wedding shoes. She sent them out to everyone. She also took some other pictures as well. Here are just a few.

Here is a short piece with photos from my mother's 80th birthday back in '08.  I used picturetrail.com

The outpouring of goodwill has been tremendous in our area the past week.  Three wild fires have been burning.  Over 400 firefighters from towns and counties near and far have responded to our call for help.  National Guard, County Road Crews, helicopters, and planes have all helped.  Many have lost outbuildings and pasture and crops, but very few, if any homes were lost.  Our school is about 10 miles from the Wellnitz Fire.   We had smoke for awhile but then the wind changed.  Some of our staff and students had to evacuate, but all are home again.