Browsing Archive: September, 2015
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 30, 2015,
I imagine you are all tucked in and snuggling up with one of the books you got at the library today. How fun was that? What was your favorite part? Blog a comment about what you liked best and you can have 6 tickets tomorrow. I think I must need new tickets already. I will have to pick up a new roll this weekend.
That's right, the weekend is not far away. Today was Wednesday already and tomorrow is Thursday and then just one more day and we're all in for the weekend. Cool~well the temper...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Tuesday, September 29, 2015,
Wear your walking shoes.
Bring a lunch. Only 2 of you ordered school lunch so...bring a lunch tomorrow please.
We are walking .8 of a mile to the library and .8 back. How much will we walk all together? Are you up for it? Comment on whether you think that seems like it will be a lot of walking or not and why and you can have 6 tickets tomorrow.
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, September 28, 2015,
I implemented a mentor-ship program in the room and so far so good. The 5th graders have really stepped up and become wonderful mentors and the 3rd and 4th graders have become excellent mentees with great questions and great attitudes. We talked about teachers having mentors and other business people like lawyers. Mentoring is a great way to give back to the community. Thanks for stepping up 5th graders.
We also started using some assigned seats today and it seemed to really make a differe...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, September 25, 2015,
Enjoy the sunshine and outdoors and we'll see you Monday.
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, September 24, 2015,
What! It's Friday already!! Where did this week go?
Tomorrow we will have our regular math and reading blocks and then in the afternoon we are going to have read aloud (blog a comment that tells if you like The Birchbark House and why or why not and you can have 10 tickets--this is the big ticket question of the day), specialist, and finally we will migrate outside. While out there we will have our naming ceremony and then work to pick a habitat that will provide shelter and a quiet place...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, September 24, 2015,
Do you?
I love the Birchbark House and all the cool Native American Art and American Indian culture and stories and origin tales and love of nature and...it is all very interesting to me. Tomorrow we are going to start to think of American Indian names for ourselves. Things like Yellow Kettle and Little Frog and Lone Dog and ...what are you thinking you'd like your name to be? We will think it through tomorrow with the help of our friends and then...pick a name day is here.
Today's ticket qu...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Tuesday, September 22, 2015,
The sun came out, the temperature is moderate, what a happy day.
The Garden Packet is due on Friday, September 25. We spend 5 whole minutes talking about the pages that are due and all that. It is tricky: everyone has to do pages 1-9 and class time was given. Everyone has to do the poem too. IF you are a 5th grader you have to do ALL the required flowers in the guide and 3 of your own choosing. IF you are a 4th grader, do 4 required and 2 of your own choosing. IF you are a 3rd grader, d...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, September 21, 2015,
Does anyone else feel like we haven't really gotten into much of a groove yet? I know it takes a while to get the patterns and plans going but...oh well. You guys are a hard working crew and you are doing all you can to get in the groove and that's all I can ask of you. Keep up the good work.
Tonight's ticket question is, "Why did the author Louise Erdrich write the book
The Birchbark House?" Give a great answer and you can have 6 tickets for that alone tomorrow morning. Go!...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Saturday, September 19, 2015,
It seems all that rain is behind us and we are getting to have a beautiful weekend. Next week we will be migrating so be ready to head outside on a moments notice. We probably won't start our migration until Tuesday or Wednesday but you just never know. Where will we go? How will we adapt to our new habitats? Do you wonder what I am talking about? Inquisitive minds want to know!! Stay tuned as all will be revealed next week.
I just got back from the off leash dog park with my dog Bailey...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 16, 2015,
Tomorrow we are going to get serious about looking through your garden packet and deciding what you need to do. I can already see that we need to hold off on a due date for it so it won't be Friday like the PEEK said. It will most likely be due sometime next week.
I LOVE your pinwheel art all about you. They are turning out so great! The Zentangle that some of you do is AMAZING!! Love it! The detail, the patience, the beautifulness of your work~you guys are the greatest.
Tomorrow we are g...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Friday, September 11, 2015,
We made it through the week. Be ready for next week to seem long. It's a whole extra day.
I am willing to continue giving you tickets for blogging and commenting on the blogs of others. The other thing you can do to earn tickets is engage in exemplary behavior. What does exemplary mean? Define it in a blog comment and you can have 4 tickets. There is also an extra credit tab with extra Kryptos that will get you 6 tickets on Monday. That seems like a ton of ticket opportunities.
I alrea...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Thursday, September 10, 2015,
Thanks for all the interesting comments you are blogging. They are really fun to read and it makes me feel like you are enjoying the start of your school year. That makes me happy because I am really enjoying it too. Loving it even!!
Tonight you can earn 4 tickets for an initial blog comment and 2 for every reply you make to someone else's comment up to 10 tickets for 5 comments. Lucy and Emma are the payroll girls and will give you your tickets in the morning.
Finally, I just saw a former ...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Wednesday, September 9, 2015,
And what a day it was! We got rained on at recess and had to run it and...lots of excitement.
Tonight there is the opportunity to earn some tickets. You can earn tickets by blogging, by responding to someone else's blog comment, and by doing the extra Kryptos on the extra credit tab.
Enjoy! Hopefully tomorrow we will get into our outdoor classroom and our life journals. We'll see how it goes.
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jamie Kovacs on Monday, September 7, 2015,
Are you ready? I am so excited I just know I won't be able to sleep tonight. If you are in my class this year, see you tomorrow! If you are off to a new adventure (like Central Middle School) good luck, have a great day, and let me know how it went.
Continue reading ...
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.
