Veterans Day

Tonight I want to share with you how we celebrate Veteran's Day at my school and in my room. I brought up the discussion "What is a veteran?" to my class and let my students share their thoughts and questions. Most had a good idea of what it means to be a veteran, how we should be so thankful and appreciative to our veteran's, etc. So many hands started popping up "My uncle was in the war", "My papa was in the Navy", so I allowed every student to share if they had a family member in the military and a little about them. The kids loved hearing it and I thought it was interesting. I shared that my Papa was in Vietnam, my father-in-law is a retired Colonel of the Tennessee National Guard, and my brother-in-law also served in the Tennessee National Guard. Then, I read the book "America's White Table", which almost brought tears to my own eyes and did bring tears to one students eyes. I felt like they really "got it".
We wrote letters to veterans that a local church was sponsoring which gave me the idea to have my students write letters to a veteran I highly respect: my father-in-law. We started by discussing what we might say to him and I wrote some words that they might need help spelling. After they wrote their first drafts, I had a writing conference with each of them, and then allowed them to start on their final drafts.

My father-in-law is a retired Colonel but has a job where he is helping to train soldiers. The kids were pretty interested in that. I cannot WAIT to send these letters to him!

We also had a Veteran's Day assembly that was really good. Did you do anything special for Veterans Day?

We are still in the middle of our astronomy unit and we have started a monthly moon sketch. Each student got a copy of a calendar of the month of November and we are doing nightly moon sketches. You should've seen the kids faces when I told them they had to do it this weekend (we never give homework over the weekend). I had to remind that it only takes about 30 seconds to look outside at the moon and draw it! I checked out lots of books from the library to go with our astronomy unit that the kids can read during independent reading or as an early finisher. Most of them have read them!