Browsing Archive: December, 2015
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, December 28, 2015,
Are you ready for a new year? Make sure you say good bye, see you next year to everyone you won't see again until Friday. That always throws them for a loop and it's kind of fun to do. Ticket task: say "See ya next year" to someone and then blog who it was and how they reacted to it and you can have 10 tickets on Monday.
Speaking of Monday, that is only a week away. Vacation is flying by. I do miss you guys though and am already planning what we will do next week for fun and for learning...
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, December 18, 2015,
I can't believe it is already winter break! YIKES. This year is flying by!
Today's ticket question is: what piece of garbage did you take to engineer into something fabulous. Blog a comment describing what you took. If you want to share your plan for repurposing you can--that's up to you. We'd love to hear it but I understand if you don't want others to copy it.
What a great show you put on today. I LOVED your puppet shows. Everyone did a great job and performed well and the little kids...
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, December 11, 2015,
Enjoy your lovely weekend. I think it's supposed to snow next week. I certainly hope so!! We had to suffer through a brown Christmas last year and I really can't bear to do that again. There is nothing as beautiful as a white Christmas and I want one this year.
Work on your reindeer plays--google docs is a great way to do that. Share with each other, comment on your changes and updates and come ready to make some cute puppets on Monday. The excitement level was high during our exploratio...
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, December 9, 2015,
Tomorrow the Maps will be 4 days late and there are still 5 of you who have not turned yours in. YIKES!! 5th graders need to know that in middle school the work that is late is often docked a letter grade for every day it's late. YIKES!! That would mean an A would now get a D. You are lucky this is NOT middle school.
Tomorrow we will dissect the Rudolph story and learn all about the man who wrote it. It is an interesting story to be sure. If you have time tonight, research Robert May an...
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, December 7, 2015,
The Landforms Maps of our schoolyard were due today. I got 13. That's 13/20. Yikes. That is not a very good % of students who turned their map in on time. It is 65% which is not that much over half, which would be 10/20 or 50%. What's up? How can I get you to turn that in? Bring it tomorrow DONE.
Today's ticket question has to do with the Exploration sharing that went on today. For the most part, the girls were darling with each other. I heard TONS of compliments, positive feedback an...
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, December 4, 2015,
Sadly I see some maps in people's mailboxes. They are due MONDAY, Dec. 7 people.
Due Monday:
Landforms Maps of our School Yard
Choice Exploration project/lesson due per your contract
We will kick off our reindeer study by considering Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and researching some facts about reindeer of the north lands. We will make a group Fast Facts Sheet to teach others about reindeer too.
Have a great weekend. Enjoy the warmish weather....
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, December 3, 2015,
Today was your last day to work on your map in class. Most of you have done a beautiful job working on these and can be really proud of your work. You are real cartographers. COOL!! They are due Monday, Dec. 7.
Tomorrow we will get to do the landforms experiment which is the running of the stream tables. This is so much fun and it really brings the vocabulary to life. Come ready to jump in and work. We will run at least 3 experiments. If there is time, you can do more. We shall see. ...
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, December 2, 2015,
Ticket Question: predict what we will do with Kyle tomorrow. Put it in a blog comment and you can have 4 tickets tomorrow.
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Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Tuesday, December 1, 2015,
Bag lunch needed tomorrow if you are a 3rd or 4th grader. You are going to Orchestra Hall and you will be missing lunch and recess completely. Remember a bag lunch!!
5th grade you are staying here. You will have business as usual for lunch and recess. The only change in your life will be that you will have math first thing in the morning as I will be going to Orchestra Hall with the other kids. You will learn what it must have felt like for the 3rd and 4th graders when you went to Deep Po...
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I am married to John Kovacs and have 5 sons, John age 35, Jim age 33, Joe age 29, Jake age 27, Vlad age 25. I also have 5 grandchildren, Jack and Lydia and Josiah, who are the kids of my oldest son and his wife, and Kennedy and Chloe who are the daughters of my second son and his wife. My husband and I live in WBL in the house where we raised all those boys.
____________My son John is married and lives in Turkey with his wife Pamela and sons Jack and Josiah and daughter Lydia. Hey, that makes me a grandmother--yikes! John is a teacher too. A couple years ago he taught at White Bear Lake and then for a couple years he's been teaching social studies to middle school kids at Hope Academy in Minneapolis. He also has taken classes at a seminary. He wrote a book called "The Historia" which you can buy on Amazon.com. He was a hockey player and played college hockey at Bethel. His wife is a lawyer worked at a big law firm in Minneapolis. Cool! Hey, guess what. I am a lawyer too!! This will be my 14th year teaching as I practiced law for over 15 years. Teaching is way more fun!! Now they are living in Turkey and simply trying to learn the language and make connections. This year my son has started free lance writing for many different publications.
__________My son Jim lives in Blaine with his wife Courtney and daughter Kennedy. They both graduated from Winona State where they were star pitchers on their baseball and softball teams. Jim graduated from St. Thomas School of Law. He clerked for a judge and now he works for a law firm in Golden Valley. His wife graduated from Des Moines University Medical School where she studied to be a physical therapist. She works for Twin Cities Orthopedics. You can check out pictures of their wedding on the summer vacation tab. Their daughters are very funny and cute and I often show the class pictures of them.
__________My son Joe graduated from Moorhead State and now got an MBA at George Washington University. He, like his brothers was a good athlete and loved sports. He also is a great singer and performer and was Danny Zuko in Grease, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, and Curly in Oklahoma--all in WBL high school. He has a teaching license and did some long term subbing in WBL most recently at Hugo Elementary School. Next he worked at Infinite Campus training teachers on software that his employer makes. He got to travel all over the United States. He is married to Emily, and there are pictures of them you can check out on the vacation tab as well. Emily is a pharmacist for CVS in Targets. They moved to Washington DC so he could attend George Washington University and get an MBA. This last summer he did an internship with the Washington Nationals baseball team for his MBA program. Now he works for IBM!
__________My son Jake graduated from University of Minnesota with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a superstar in math. He was a TA for a professor in the computer science department. He really likes to golf and was on the White Bear Lake golf team. He worked at Gem Lake so if you ever golf there, you may have seen Jake. Do you like golf? As soon as he graduated he started working full time at a company that writes online computer games. He spends his day writing code to create games. He loves that kind of writing, do you? He taught many of my students to write code in Scratch. He got married in Jan. 2020 to a darling girl named Molly who works at his same company. She is a game tester and plays the games the guys like Jake write.
_________Vlad officially became our son in June of 2010 although we have loved him since we met him a couple years before that. We traveled to his homeland, Latvia, 3 times to make him ours. He has been living with us since March of 2010. He graduated from WBL High School too. He traveled to China with the high school a couple years ago and wants to go back. Can you believe that you can travel with your classmates and friends when you are in high school? He graduated from the University of Wisconsin River Falls. He spent a semester in Seoul, S. Korea in a study abroad program through River Falls. He also a semester in China in 2019.
_________My husband John works for Collins Electrical Company as a project manager but he is amazing with computers. He set up this web site for me!! Thanks John. He is the IT guy for his parents, and our whole family!!
My husband and I have a cute teddy bear puppy who is 3 years old. He is very spoiled.
