Well, this week started off on quite the interesting note. My older brother and his wife have two little ones already, and I was set to be an aunt for the third time in November. Well, the little guy was so eager to come out that he decided to arrive over a month early! I got the call late Sunday night and was on standby awaiting any sort of news the majority of the next morning, so I was a bit of a wreck all day. I gave the kids a quick rundown of the situation (considering I was continually checking my phone...), and they were all so sweet and supportive. Fortunately, everyone is healthy, and I am officially the aunt of little Aiden! I've been regularly showing the class pics, and when I finally got to visit him in the hospital on Thursday, I brought a very special card created by our wonderful 4th graders. My brother and sister-in-law got a kick out of all the "life advice for Aiden" words of wisdom included in the card...

This week, one of the books that we read was Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. The book ends in a rather poignant way, but the author's message is both clear and important: kindness matters. In the book, the teacher does an activity with her class that involves students placing a stone in a bucket of water while stating an act of kindness they've done recently. The teacher encourages her students to watch the water ripple, and points out that kindness spreads in a similar way. I thought this was a beautiful analogy, so we did the same exercise in our classroom. We also used this story to practice annotating and summarizing, which are two reading strategies we'll be circling back to quite a bit this year.

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were Logan G. and Aliyah. Effort is the word that comes to mind when I think of both kiddos. They've both really impressed me with their willingness to work hard and their perseverance during difficult tasks. Logan has been awesome in contributing to classroom discussions, and Aliyah is constantly making me smile. Congrats, you two!