Birthdays and Bubbles

Sometimes our regular day is interrupted by a special event. This month we have had two birthdays.















Today, all of the children were given little bottles of bubbles to play with during recess (Thank you, Linda!)

The Itsy Bitsy Spider in Spanish

The children are very excited about Halloween approaching, so this week in Spanish class they learned some words associated with Halloween. They learned how to say "pumpkin" and played a pumpkin matching game. They also made paper plate webs with dangling plastic spiders and learned to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Walking to Washington

In an attempt to get a little more exercise (teachers included), we have started taking walks around the edge of the campus every Tuesday and Thursday.



One of the high school teachers measured the distance for us and it is 1/3 of a mile.



Since it is more fun when we have a goal to work towards, we decided to pretend we are walking to Washington, D.C. (it seemed appropriate since we are studying American history this year). It is 783 miles from Gainesville, FL. to Washington, D.C., so we will have to walk around the property 2,349 times.

These walks also give the children a chance to play on the exercise equipment that they don't usually get to use





and interact with nature. On today's walk they had a great time trying to catch falling leaves before they touched the ground.

Muscles

The elementary students reviewed what they had learned about bones, during their Friday science class.

Mixed up bones were hidden under this cloth and the children had to assemble complete skeletons from them.











Then they moved on to learning about muscles.



This demonstration of how the muscles in the arm work, was cleverly done with two long, skinny balloons for each child.



Several of the boys wanted to show me how big their arm muscles were.

Language Arts

The Language Arts program for the elementary students is divided into 4 stations. There are sight words, word families, phonics, and handwriting for the younger children, while the older students have reading comprehension, vocabulary, editing/grammar, and handwriting.

Working on a list of "sight words"





The children spend twenty minutes at each station.



This group is learning about words that end in "ish".



The small groups, based on reading ability, mean that each child gets the attention and help they need from the teacher.

Bones

For the past two weeks, the elementary students have continued to learn about bones in science.





Last week, they learned about hands and the different types of joints.



A demonstration of a ball and socket joint:




This week, they learned about the skull, continued reviewing bone names, did body tracings, and worked on telling right from left on someone face them.