Reading some of the posts kind of makes me feel "ancient" because technology is not part of my plan! I am 54, but still have a lot of energy. I'm lagging in all of this new technology. I'll probably never catch up with some of you! It is impressive though! I met with two ladies last week that volunteered to help us with our quilt and I was so impressed with "Sarah". She is 86 years old, never married, and she helped build the atomic bomb!  She was very alert, inspiring, and very interesting! I know Wonderopolis partners want to know how they have made a positive impact and I am guessing this will be one of them for both her and our school. I have already been to her house and we visited for almost two hours. She showed me several of her quilts, gave me a little lesson, and she is very excited about coming to school next week and working with students. Through conversation I thought she may have been a retired teacher, but she is a retired secretary with strong values. I look forward to knowing her better.

We received our badge making machine, but my plan is not working like it should.  I was going to let them illustrate the wonder for the badges, but there wasn't enough room and they looked pretty bad. The badges are just 2" round. However, we came up with another way of using them. When students explore a Wonder we take a picture of them with some type of  evidence and they get to make a badge. So far, this has been pretty successful. One of the students brought in a stuffed Sloth of Syd from Ice Age to prove he had explored the Sloth Wonder, which was so cute! I attached a photo of a badge that was

made by the special needs students I had spoke of in the last posting. It's not a good photo, because the badge was so shiny.Today several of the classrooms are exploring the Groundhog Day Wonder. I attached a photo of an art project from a class and they will make badges today. Kids seem pretty excited about having their faces on badges! The links on the Wonders are coming in mighty handy too for teachers. The students are not only learning content, but the arts are already tied into it. This evidence is required by the fine arts reviews we have to do now and that is a time saver!