Stagecast and Scratch: Learn how to make your own video games

Some of the kids in my class have played around with Stagecast which allows them to make their own video game. I have the software at school from when I used to teach it, but it is not a free program (except for the demo version). If kids want to use a similar free program they can download Scratch. It was designed for kids at MIT. Scratch allows you to make animations, games, and other multi-media interactive creations. Here are some tutorials for learning how to use Scratch. Why play video games when you can make your own? This may take some work, but you will learn a lot!

Meet Jeremy Reiner

Today, the fourth graders at New Searles Elementary School had weatherman Jeremy Reiner, from WHDH-TV channel 7 in Boston visit to tell us everything there is to know about weather. He usually is on the evening news, but today he will be delivering the weather news from 4:00-6:30.

Tangram Puzzles

Today I introduced the class to Tangram puzzles. It was deja vu for me as this was a lesson that I enjoyed doing at the Bondeni School in the Mathare Valley slums of Nairobi, Kenya last summer.

You can play an online Tangram puzzle games here or here. Have fun. It is not that easy!

Strawbery Banke Field Trip

Here is the animoto video of our field trip to Strawbery Banke.

DIscipline at the Little Red Schoolhouse

Last month on our wonderful trip to the Little Red Schoolhouse in Nashua, we learned about how students were disciplined in the old days.

From Kenya to Nashua: Pentominoes

Today, we extended a lesson on pentominoes that I started over the summer in Kenya and at the beginning of the year with this class. We worked with puzzle pieces called pentominoes. See the lesson in Kenya and explanation of pentominoes here. Today we worked with the pentominoes again to measure perimeter and area. You can go here and play with an interactive set of pentominoes.

Classroom Donors Choose Project

The class has certainly enjoyed the two Brian Selznick books "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" and "Wonderstruck". Since reading the books last fall, different students keep checking out the books to reread them every time we go to the library. I wrote up a Donors Choose project to get 5 classroom copies of each book. You can find the project here. The Nashua Board of Education.is paying for one-half of the project. If you would like to donate any sum, through March 19 your donation will be matched by Donors Choose if you include the the match code BLOOM.

• Spread the word! Send friends and family to http://www.donorschoose.org/newsearles234 and ask them to support our classroom.


• Donors must enter BLOOM during check-out where it says "Match or gift code" - and voila! The donation is automatically doubled. See where donors must enter the code.