Miriam School Blog: 2008

Extreme Media!! Coming To Miriam School

The theme for this year's summer program has been chosen! "Extreme Media!!" will be the focus of this summer's activities. We look forward to creating some tech savvy students who will be involved in taking pictures, creating digital storybooks and making movies. We hope to see everyone back again for a fun filled summer! Read More!

Service Project

This year the 8th Grade graduating class has raised a total of $154 from the Thanksgiving Hot Dog-Hot Chocolate Feast! The students have decided to donate the money to a family in need through the 100 Neediest Cases Progam. We're proud that our 8th graders are setting such a good example of "service" for their fellow schoolmates. Read More!

Navajo Nation Book Drive

As part of our month of gratitude and service the Miriam School held a book drive to benefit the Navajo Nation Library. The book collection began during the Scholastic Book Fair and continued until the end of November. Through the generosity of our Miriam families we collected a total of 627 books! Ms. Diane and Ms. Andrea sorted and packed the books with the help of Charity Lockhart, Paul Williams, Natalie Bourke and Madelyn Lamb.

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Hotdogs, Hot Chocolate and an 8th Grade Showdown

November 26th marked the 4th annual 8th Graders vs. Faculty Volleyball game. Along with the volleyball match all of the students got to enjoy a hot dog and delicious hot chocolate. This year we added a challenge to the day and played a kickball game that included some brave parents. As always, it was an enjoyable way to kick off the holiday season.

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Falling Leaves Fun

Miss Angie's room recently took a walk around the school grounds to investigate the changes of the season. They collected leaves and brought the colorful items back to the classroom to make some observations about them. Writing in their journals afterward was much more meaningful after the hands-on experience of their nature walk.

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Halloween Fun

Miriam students enjoyed a fun day of parties and surprises before they headed home to trick or treat. Some students made there own ghosts, some enjoyed delicious goodies and some had the chance to visit a "haunted" OT room.

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Book Talk

As the country was involved in deciding who would be our next President, the students of Miriam were busy learning about leadership and the election process. Room 2 recently reviewed the book If I Ran For President and had some ideas of their own to share with the other students.

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October Miriam News

Room 9 recently completed the first of our quarterly Miriam News broadcasts. The students did a fantastic job of writing, reporting and recording the current events of Miriam School. And what Miriam News broadcast would be complete without bloopers.

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Miriam On Safari

Miriam students began their safari adventure at the Scholastic Book Fair today. Curious George stopped by for a visit and we had our first raffle for free books this morning. Anjali Petnana, Frankie Hagaman and Chris Wheeler were the first to receive a free book from the Book Fair. We will draw names from each team each morning of the Book Fair until its closing on Thursday evening.

Thanks to the generosity of our Miriam families the One For Books campaign is well on its way to being a success! We hope you all have a chance to stop by and shop.

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Zoo Visits Miriam

This year Miriam School will be participating in the Zoo Outreach Program. Each classroom will get two visits from the Zoo docents. Rooms 5A and 5B participated in the first of these programs today and had a chance to pet "Chicken Little" as well as to create their own puppets. They also had a great hands-on experience with a variety of pelts and coverings from turtles to owls.

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Book Reviews

In conjunction with our "Literacy Links to Learning" theme this year, each classroom will be presenting a book review. The first to tackle this task was Room 1. The students worked collaboratively to draw pictures, write paragraphs and record voice-overs to create a short movie of their review. Stay tuned to the blog for our future book reviews!

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Miriam Connections

Several of our classrooms will be participating in collaborative projects with other schools around the country and around the world! Rooms 1 and 2 have already begun their collaborations.

Room 1 is participating in "A Room With A View" where they will take a picture from their classroom window each month and then post the weather conditions and develop their creative writing skills by writing descriptions, poems, etc. to go along with their picture. You can check out their project by clicking here:

Room 2 just recently participated in the O.R.E.O Project. They took the challenge to create Oreo cookie stacks to learn about math concepts of tallying and averaging. You can check out their project by clicking here:

You can also enjoy a slideshow of the project which concluded with a tasty treat!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

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Fall Family Dinner

Miriam Families enjoyed a beautiful evening for our Fall Family Dinner last Friday. Psghettis provided the Italian feast to the delight of our children and their families.

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Peaceful Morning

Today Miriam School celebrated International Day of Peace through the Pinwheels for Peace program. We joined many groups around the world by placing our pinwheels on the front lawn symbolizing our hope for peace around the world. Joining us for the celebration were Gerry Welch, Mayor of Webster Groves, and Kathlyn Fares, State Representative of Missouri.

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Miriam's African Connection

Last year Miriam participated in a program called AlphaSmarts for Africa. This program allowed schools to return used or outdated AlphaSmarts to receive a rebate to use toward the purchase of new keyboards. Renaissance Learning in partnership with Generation for Change and Growth then retooled the keyboards for use in schools in Kenya, Africa.

This is a wonderful program that not only allows Miriam to enhance our academic program but provides an opportunity for Kenyan schools to gain their first experience using modern technology.

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Olivia Visits Miriam

Room 4 students had an especially exciting day today when they got their first visit from Olivia of Support Dogs, Inc. Thanks to the hard work of Jackie Smith, Miriam will now be partnering with Support Dogs, an organization that "helps people with special needs achieve an improved quality of life through the use of assistance dogs."

Olivia will be visiting Room 4 every other Friday from 10:30-11:30 during her reading time. Olivia is a Newfoundland weighing 100 lbs. and is part of the PAWS for Reading Program, the newest program offered by Support Dogs, Inc. The purpose of the program is to have dogs serve as a nonthreatening incentive to promote reading, writing, and increased interaction and social skills in the classroom.

We are very excited to add Olivia to our Miriam enrollment and look forward to working with her this year! Read More!