Warming Them Up

So today I asked my 3rd and 4th graders how many knew Mrs. Schaa is going to China for the Flat Classroom Conference......no hands....hmmmm....guess I need to communicate a bit better with the WHOLE school...At any rate, once I showed them MrsSchaa's Adventure in China blog and the 2 videos that I have posted about "how far" and "what" I am flying in, then came the questions...Will you come back? Wouldn't it be closer to fly west rather than east like you show in your video? (great question!) Will you bring us back some octopus to eat? were just a sprinkling of what came at me... after a brief description of Beijing, I asked them if we could make an S is for Stratford- an alphabet book about Stratford for me to take and give to kids that I meet when I'm there. They were agreeable to this. I told them that since we have such a different town than Beijing,  it is so unique that we need to share it with the world! After brainstorming for a bit, we have knocked out all but 3 letters of the alphabet...(Mrs. Schaa and a few other teachers are working on I, Z and Y) All the 3rd and 4th graders will do their artistic part and illustrate it, to give it that perfect child's touch...hoping we can broaden their horizons and maybe educate some other kids about what a wonderful little 'berg we have here in the center of Iowa!!
(photo courtesy of Flickr)