C4K April

I'm not sure if this was on purpose or if it was just a strange coincidence, but all three of my C4K children for April were from New Zealand and I thought that was really cool. The first was Takai, a child in grade 5 who wrote a blog entry about how he and his family spent Christmas. He had tons of pictures and even a drawing he did of his day at the beach! It was really adorable, here was my response: Hey Takai! My name is Catherine Stalvey and I am in college in the United States. One of my classes has asked that I read over your blog. I must say, I'm pretty impressed! You are a very good writer and you explain things very well. I can't believe you went to the beach on Christmas! Wasn't it cold? I live in the south, so I know what hot weather is like, but even we can't go to the beach on Christmas. I love that your family prays together, so does mine. I believe that is very important. I hope you are enjoying school this year! Good luck!

The second child I had this month was Aaron, a little boy in grade 4 who had just gone to his school's Fiafia day. This was really interesting to me, because a little girl I was assigned last month, Grace, wrote about her Fiafia day as well. His blog was also really well written, he set it up like a poem and his grammar as fabulous for a student his age. Here is my response to Aaron: Hey Aaron, my name is Catherine and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama in the US. I really enjoyed reading your blog about your experience with Fiafia! I read another student's blog a few weeks ago, and she talked all about how much she loved Fiafia, too. Her name was Grace and she was in the Nieuan group, I wonder if you have ever seen her. I told Grace that we have a similar day called International Day, where several people bring things from different countries and everyone gets to experience a wide variety of cultures. I understand how nervous you got when you had to perform your song, I get nervous in front of big groups, too. The Jump Jam sounds like a lot of fun though! I actually just went to a concert last week and one of the bands that played had an "energy" portion of their show, too. They told everyone to put their arm around their neighbor and start jumping-it was a lot of fun! I hope you enjoy the rest of your school year and all of the Fiafia's you go to in the future!

My final C4K student for this month (and this semester, tear) was Efa-Lata, a little girl in Mrs. She's grade 2 classroom. She wrote about the day her family went to Mission Bay, a local beach, and had a picnic and went swimming. She, too, had a drawing of her adventures from that day and there were even a few actual photos of her and her family. Here is my response: Hey Efa-Lata! My name is Catherine and I go to school in the United States. I am studying to be a teacher so I am really enjoying reading your class's blog! Your weekend at Mission Bay sounds like a lot of fun! I love picnics and swimming. I go out on my boat a lot and I go out on my family's sailboat sometimes, too. I hope you enjoyed your weekend of fun! You seem like a sweet little girl and you are SO beautiful. Keep learning! I am already following your teacher on Twitter, so tell her to tweet me if she would like to after she reads this. Have a great summer!

I have so enjoyed getting a look into the minds of all the little ones I have read about this semester. It's really a totally different perspective when you talk to children vs. when you read what they have written. When they are allowed to write whatever they want, it seems like they open up a lot more and you get a little insight into their ever-changing minds. It really was an honor to read through so many blog entries by all these sweet kids and I can't wait to use a class blog in MY classroom one day! I even found this cute little cartoon about kids blogging-Why Should Schools Blog?", you should definitely take a look.