Writing Campaign

CONNECTING CLASSROOMS: Today, CJ and Annabelle signed up to participate in The Great Mail Race. 

Recently, the Shoreline school where they take classes received a letter from a fourth grade student, Ricardo, of San Francisco. Ricardo is participating in The Great Mail Race, a program started in the late 1980s by North Carolina school teacher Sarah Wiggins.

Wiggins started the program in hopes of improving writing skills and forging new worlds of experience. Ultimately, CeeJ and Bee's school is hoping to have students contact a class in all 50 states.

From Ricardo's letter we learned that he attends Cleveland Elementary and his school's mascot is the Peace Sign. How 'bout that?!

To participate, CJ and Annabelle were each asked to pick out a state. CJ said, "Las Vegas!" without hesitation. ;) We set him straight on the whole city/state thing. He ended up picking an elementary in Vegas - Berkeley L. Bunker Elementary, to be specific. Naturally, we were curious right off the bat whom the school was named after. Turns out Bunker was a senator from the Silver State. The elementary named after him is home of the Broncos, and based on their Web site, it looks like "Dare to Dream" might be their motto.  One thing that caught my eye on their site is there's a "Report a Bully" link right on the front page.

Annabelle chose Rhode Island straight away. Then, the city of Ashaway was selected, because it starts with an A, like her name. Ashaway is an unincorporated village that had just 589 households in the 2000 census. Ashaway has a single elementary school - the aptly named Ashaway Elementary. According to their school's Web site, their mascot is the cougar, and they're "Roaring with Pride and Ready to Learn!" Hopefully, they'll be roaring and ready to respond to Annabelle's inquiry.

The kids have to write a letter to a class at their assigned schools with a little info about themselves and their school, and encourage them to participate in the Great Mail Race.

After they got their packets of info, the kids each got to color their chosen state in on a U.S. map, and put a pin in the map where their city is.

MUST BE NICE: CJ was up late, Late, LATE last night. Past midnight. And then he was up before 6 a.m. today. Upon upping he remarked on his short sleep but then added, "You want to know the funny thing? My body doesn't feel any different even though I stayed up almost all night."

Must be nice.

SHORT STUFF: This blog post is going to be succinct. I have to finish the monthly reports for the kids' Shoreline school tonight. It takes me hours to do it, because I have to go back through a whole preceding month's worth of blog posts, taking notes about what we actually did for education for the month and then report on it, subject by subject. While it is a chore, it's well worth it - doing that is what allows the kids to participate in those classes and use that facility for free, which saves us hundreds of dollars a month.