Pictures have arrived! If I did not give you your child's pictures this morning you should find them in his/her backpack. Class pictures have not come yet, but should be here soon.

Several people have asked about Halloween next Monday. While I know the holiday will be in the front of many children's minds, my intent is to keep the day as routine as possible. With our half day schedule it seems kids will have lots of opportunities to participate in Halloween activities later on. Hopefully maintaining some normalcy at school might help kids last until trick-or-treat time!

During Writers Workshop some children have been writing very creative but violent stories. Today we began our workshop with a discussion about this. While I want to encourage writing in every possible way, I'm not comfortable with stories about killing. We brainstormed alternative ideas (magic, having problems resolved in a friendly way) and decided that a good rule of thumb is that a topic is okay if I would read it to the class. If it's not the kind of story I would read to the class then it is probably not an appropriate topic to write about.