Letters to the Future

In the book I am reading to my son as a bedtime story, an eight year old boy uses a machine, called a chronofax, to send letters to his adult self. His 28 year old self not only receives the letters, but changes the way he is living his life, to try to live up to the expectations of the little boy he once was.

After reading that, I realized what a great writing prompt that would be, so I had the children write letters to the adults they will be in 20 years. The first 5 of these letters that were turned it, I posted on my own blog and the author of the book read them and posted the link to them on his facebook and twitter feeds.

"This is awesome. Lisa Rooney is an elementary school teacher, and she was inspired by the concept of the Chronofax from the song Letters Between a Little Boy and Himself as an Adult, and the novel The Wrath of Fate. She assigned her class to write letters to themselves as adults. Go see the (very funny) results!"

- Robert Brown, author of The Wrath of Fate


So, here are those original five letters, along with a couple more that have been handed in since then (I realize that there are still mistakes, but I wanted this to be a fun writing exercise).

Shaving Cream Painting

In art class, this past Friday, the children made designs with paint on shaving cream and then pressed paper onto the designs to make prints.













Children who wished to add painted details to their tie-dyed T-shirts from the previous week, were allowed to do that, as well.

The Potato Cannon Demonstration

A couple of the high school students demonstrated a potato cannon for the elementary students during the last few minutes of their Friday science class.

Earth Day, a Couple Days Late

Earth Day was actually Sunday, but since that wasn't a school day, we had our belated celebration today. The children were asked to bring their lunches in re-usable containers, so that we would have zero waste today. We then had a picnic lunch, followed by picnic type games, like hula hoops, Frisbees, badminton, croquet, and tug-of-war. It was a beautiful day for a picnic!

Total Immersion History

 The younger elementary students aren't just learning about the Corps of Discovery, they ARE the Corp of Discovery. President Thomas Jefferson asks his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an expedition to the West, to make maps, study plants and animal, make friends with the natives, and possibly find a water route to the Pacific ocean.
 While the corps spent the winter at Fort Mandan, they were joined by a French trader,Toussaint Charbonneau,and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. They would work as guides and interpreters for the explorers. Sacagawea's baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, better known as "Pomp" was born while they were still at Fort Mandan.
 Sacagawea   Toussaint Charbonneau
 Sacagawea and baby Pomp played an important roll in the rest of the trip. The native people they met were less suspicious of a group traveling with a woman and child, because they knew that nobody would take a woman and child to war.
 Sacagawea knew which plants were edible and was able to cook for the men.
 Once they crossed the mountains, they made dug-out canoes and continued their journey westward.
 They finally reached the Pacific Ocean!
 They spent the winter at Fort Clatsop.
 The men became very fond of Pomp and Clark often referred to him a "my dancing boy". The journey back to St. Louis: This will be our last week studying Lewis and Clark. We will be finishing up this book tomorrow: One of the reading groups is also reading the book Tall Tails, which is told from the perspective of Seaman, Lewis' dog. We will also be watching the movie of The Time Warp Trio: Lewis and Clark

Action Poem

The newest poems the children have been working on use adverbs that end in "ly" and verbs ending in "ing" to describe an activity. The poems are based on the pattern set by this sample poem, "Rebound",byNancy Mack.
A wide variety of academic levels are represented in these poems, since I had all of my language arts groups work on them. The younger children, as young as 6 years old, dictated their poems to me and I wrote the sentences on the board for them to copy, while the older children (our oldest three are eleven years old), did most of the work without assistance.