My favorite (okay, my second favorite, #1 is “Green Eggs and Ham”) Dr. Seuss book is “Fox In Socks.” When my children were small I loved to read this to them…very fast. The challenge in reading “Fox In Socks” fast is that the entire book is one big tongue twister!

Since my boys are all grown up, I haven’t had the opportunity to practice my tongue twisting skills for a few years, so I thought it would be fun to read “Fox In Socks” to you, in honor of Read Across America . To hear my reading, click on “Fox In Socks” in the Audio Files menu to the right.

Get yourself a copy of “Fox In Socks” and see if you can match my reading time of 4 minutes and 19 seconds (that includes a short musical introduction, so the actual reading time was a little bit less). Remember, it only counts if you can do it without making any mistakes!

Post your best reading time in the comment box and I’ll see if we can have the student with the best time create a recording to add to our blog.

For some extra fun with Dr. Seuss, check out Seussville!
Here’s a tribute to Dr. Seuss I wrote last year. Hope you enjoy it this year!

A little tribute in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, March 2!
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!
You’re much more fun than Mother Goose!
Your words just dance across the page
And bring a smile to every age.

I always pick the tricky Fox
Who talks in twisters wearing socks.
Fox in Socks just cannot lose,
But which Seuss story would you choose?

Now that it’s coming to an end, I started to think about the February vacation and where it came from.  Did you know that we didn’t always have a February break? Way back when , we just got a day off for Lincoln’s birthday and a day off for Washington’s birthday. During the energy crisis, I think in the 1970s, it was decided that closing schools for a week in February, traditionally the coldest and snowiest month of the year, would save a tremendous amount of heating fuel and money for schools.  Wrapping the vacation around the Presidential birthdays was convenient, and I’m sure gave the stores a good reason to run sales.  A win-win situation.

You might be interested to know that there are schools in the last few years that have decided to do away with the February vacation break, because they believed breaking up the school year so soon after the December vacation was not helpful to students, who they felt would forget too much of what they learned by this interruption.

What do you think about this? Do you feel that we should get rid of the February vacation to help you learn more (and maybe end school a little bit earlier) or do you think we should keep things just as they are?  Remember to explain WHY you feel the way you do.

Students in class 5-407 worked on a Black History Month tribute in the form of first-person speeches by notable African Americans. They browsed through a group of websites I posted on the fifth grade wiki to select an individual to research, and then were able to get additional information by using the Google custom search engine linked to the wiki. After completing their research, each student wrote a speech in the first person, to introduce their subject in our PS 233 Tribute to Black History podcast. Several students also wrote brief introductions to head up each of our eight podcast episodes.  We also created a CD with all of the episodes, which we hope will be broadcast over the school PA system throughout the month.

I’m really proud of your accomplishment! Way to go kids!