Yesterday, Aya celebrated her birthday with us by sharing some special photos and telling us more about herself.  She also showed us her traditional Japanese school bag, called a "lan-doo-selu".  

Thank you, Aya!

We had a visit this week from a librarian from the  Ann Arbor District Library, as a follow up to our field trip last November.  She brought lots of goodies to show us.  Many of the children were amazed to learn that you can check out things like die cutters and musical instruments from the library! We got to try both out.  If you'd like to see what types of items there are, go to http://www.aadl.org/, then click on "Catalog" and look towards the right under "Unusual Stuff".

Yesterday we also began to learn the basics of how to write a paragraph. We used a paragraph 

"brain frame" as our planning sheet.  Ask your child to explain how it works. After they fill in their brain frame, they use it to write their paragraph. (The last two pictures show one student's brain frame and next the paragraph she wrote.  I'm sorry the last sentence is cut off, it was on the back of the page!) 

Today in Social Studies we continued our map work by practicing compass directions, navigating our way to various destinations on a small map of a town.  There was a lot of discussion about that little digital compass that many of you parents have in your cars, 

and how you can see it change from N, S, E, to W as you turn on different streets.