Here at St. James, Halloween Book Character Day is a fun traditional event where students and teachers dress up as their favorite characters from books instead of traditional Halloween costumes.

Here’s what it usually involves:

• 📚 Focus on reading: The goal is to encourage a love of books and literacy by connecting reading with something exciting and creative.

• 👕 Dress-up day: Students choose a character from a book they’ve read and come to school dressed as that character.

• 🎭 Presentation: Students use presentation skills to, show off their costumes while holding the book that inspired their outfit.

It’s a great way to make Halloween school-appropriate, fun, and educational—all at once!

A Poetry Café is a fun, cozy classroom event where students read their own poetry aloud in a setting that feels like a real coffee shop.

Teachers usually dim the lights, play soft jazz, put out “café-style” tablecloths, battery candles, and maybe serve hot chocolate or cookies. Students take turns going up to the “mic” to perform or read their poems while the audience snaps (instead of claps!) when finished — just like real poetry slams.

Purpose:

• Celebrate students’ writing in a special, meaningful way

• Build confidence with public speaking

• Let students experience poetry as performance — not just on paper

It’s also a great end-of-unit showcase for families.

Have you ever tried to see how many drops of water you can fit on a penny before it spills over? It’s a fun way to learn about surface tension — the invisible “skin” that holds water together!

At first, the water stays on the penny, forming a rounded bubble shape. That’s because water molecules like to stick together. This creates a tight “skin” on the surface of the water called surface tension.

As more drops are added, the surface tension stretches — but eventually it can’t hold anymore, and the water spills off the penny.

Celebrating Emmett! Birthdays are one of the happiest days of the year!

Friday, October 17, 2025

What a fun week we had studying the Albuquerque Balloon Festival! Our Wordly Wise story was filled with rich vocabulary and cool facts about hot air balloons and the hard work that goes into an event this big!

Here are a few cool facts we learned:

• Biggest Balloon Party in the World! – Over 600 balloons fly in the sky at once.

• Magic Winds – Albuquerque has special wind patterns called the “Albuquerque Box” that help balloons float around and land safely.

• Balloon Glow – At night, the balloons stay on the ground but light up like giant lanterns.

In addition to learning about the Albuquerque balloon festival, we put our creativity to the test and made our own hot air balloons using a paper mach’e mix of flour and water. This art project took us 30 minutes each day this week. 3 layers of mach’e were applied and then students painted them to personalize it. I will definitely do this project again next year!

September 11

Although my 3rd graders do not remember, I will never forget. In honor of this sad day in history, we talked about how these events brought people together all over the country and why we are proud to be Americans!