Cartooning and drawing and comics, oh my!

<a href="http://clipartmag.com/comic-book-clipart">Comic Book Clipart</a>

There are sooo many wonderful opportunities to interact and learn from children's book illustrators, graphic novelists, and authors and we wanted to share them with all of you.  This is a perfect opportunity to take a "course" from one of these instructors and improve your skills -- perhaps it could be a family learning project even!

• Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems -- The author/illustrator of the Elephant & Piggie and Pigeon books invites us to join him every day at lunch for a new activity.  The activities are archived for access later, too.  New episodes arrive every day at 1:00 ET.
• Draw Everyday with JKK -- Author/illustrator of the "Lunch Lady" series and "Hey, Kiddo" provides daily drawing lessons on YouTube Live (archived after).  These lessons will have one focus for the week which continues to build skills each day.  Special guests will appear on occasion, too.  New episodes everyday at 2:00 ET.
• Ed Emberley's Drawing Blog -- This is a great spot if you are just looking to learn how to draw specific items.  Posts include "thumbprint" drawings, too.  Check it out!
• Jarrett Lerner's Comic Activities -- A plethora of activities are available on Jarrett's site.  (Jarrett is a Massachusetts author and graphic novelist -- he's been to Vermont several times for workshops & events.)  Activities include blank comic book pages and "finish this comic" activities to encourage creativity.  Bonus: Share your comics with him and he might even post on his social media accounts!

ICYMI: Family Distance Learning Survey

As MMUUSD navigates our move to distance learning, we want to be sure that we are meeting the needs of each of our students and their families.  IF you have not already seen this survey via district email, please take just a moment to fill it out.  It will help us to better meet your needs as we continue to make plans.  Distance Learning Survey

Thank you!

Epic Books Online

Epic Books!

One resource available to our students during this dismissal is Epic Books.  Hopefully, you (parents) have received an invitation from Epic to create a home account for your child that connects to our classroom account.  If not, please reach out and let us know the email address you'd like the invitation sent!

For now, students can get on and explore...read and listen to a wide variety of books and become familiar with the platform and the nuance of e-reading.

Eventually, we may "assign" collections of books for students to read that correspond to learning in our virtual class.  We'll let you know when this happens.

Keep reading!

Classroom Codes:
Mrs. Ayer: dnl3223
Mrs. Girouard: evr8530

Mystery Doug and Scholastic Learn From Home

Students have loved watching the weekly Mystery Doug science videos.  Here is the newest one on how hand sanitizers kill germs.

                                                              Mystery Doug


Also, Scholastic Magazine has out some online resources if you are looking for extra activities for your children.  They offer preschool through ninth grade.  The activities are set up daily and after students have read an article they can complete some work in a variety of academic areas.

                                              Scholastic Learn from Home

What Does Maintenance Learning Look Like This Week

Dear Families and Students,

We know we are all trying to settle into a new routine for the next two weeks.  As teachers, we are working hard to learn all the ways we can access each other, our families and students through technology.  Please continue to reach out to us if you have any questions or any needs for your family.  We can work with you to help find the needed resources.  Together, we will get through this and be a stronger community!

The goal until April 6 is for maintenance learning for students.  That means we want to make sure students are still practicing all the skills and concepts they've been taught this year, but are not being required to do "new learning."  That'll start on April 6 (remotely) if we aren't back in school.  Everyone now has their learning bags and Chromebooks to access Google Classroom and other sites that students are already familiar with.

Here is an idea of how to use the materials in the bag and other programs, along with a sense of how much time to devote to each:

• Cursive 10 min. a day (in bag)
• Reading 30-45 min. a day (choice books already at home)
• Word Study twice a week (in bag)
• Math 15+ min. a day either through games (in bag) or eSpark
• Check Google Classroom daily for updates from all teachers
• Other Things to Work On: Flipgrid, Edutyping, and Listen to Class Read Aloud

Take care and stay healthy!

:) Marie and Tonya

Be Tick Smart!

A reminder from Nurse Hadley as we all start to venture outdoors a bit more this spring!

Familiar Sites for Working at Home

Here are some anytime go-to activities for students to work on while we are experiencing this school dismissal and distance learning.  Please reach out to your teacher if you need any help accessing these sites!  (We will likely keep updating this as we think of more lessons/activities.)

EduTyping:  This can be accessed via ClassLink or the "Student" section of the RES website.

Account ID:  cesuschools
Sign in with MMUUSD google account

eSpark:  Math and reading lessons, games and activities that we can tailor specifically to your child.  This can be accessed via Google Classroom.

Code.org: Online coding tutorials and "classes" available for free.  Many are able to be completed independently.  If you need a sign-in and don't remember it, check in with your teacher.







Other great websites:
Multiplication.com:  Also includes games for addition and subtraction.