Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day a day early this year, since it falls on a Saturday.

There was plenty of the wearing O' the green.





The Lego mini-figure one child brought to share:



Dancing to "Rocky Road to Dublin":







There were still regular classes, though, too. There was a spelling test first thing this morning, followed by science class.







When we returned to the classroom, we discovered that the leprechauns had been there.

Boy's room


Girl's room


We had our usual Friday pizza, along with St. Patrick's Day treats donated by parents.



Then there was outside recesses, where the children discovered that the leprechauns had been on the playground, as well.





Looking for clues:




Checking the leprechaun trap. I didn't see it, but they say they caught and released a frog.



We finished off our day in art class.

The Revolution Continues

We've been doing some really great looking coloring, cutting, and glueing projects for American history.



The younger elementary children have continued learning about important people during the American Revolution, by studying George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.











Besides the fun new pages for their history log books, they have also listened to books about the people we've been studying. Here are two of the books that we've read this week:





The older children have been working on Revolutionary War vocabulary posters.





The entire elementary has been slowly working their way through the children's history series Liberty's Kids, by watching a half hour episode at the end of each school day. Today's episode was "Captain Molly".

The Middle School Garden

Tiny spring plants are starting to grow in the garden the Middle School students have started. It is part of a community service project to provide food for needy people in the area.

Telescopes

The science class continued learning about space today, by learning how to use a telescope.

Here are the planets they were trying to see:











The children were also able to see the progress from the crystal growing experiment they started a couple weeks ago.

Freeing the Imagination

On Valentine's Day, artist, Myke Amend, posted a free coloring page online. I printed off copies for each student to color when they had free time. Since the subject matter of the coloring page is a fantasy scene, I told the students that it was their world, which could be made of anything and colored any color they could imagine. Most of the coloring the children have been doing in class has been for their American History logbooks and therefore confined to realistic images, colored with realistic colors. This fantastical scene freed them to be creative.









At school this year, we've talked quite a bit about how everyone sees things differently and this art project has been a great way to demonstrate that. Since this has been a spare time activity and not part of the regular curriculum, some students are still working on their pictures, but here are some of the completed ones:

I'm Talking...

The children have just finished their latest, and most difficult, poem. The lesson was about using synonyms and placing commas between adjective. The sample poem was titled "I'm Talking Big", read here by two of our students:



Each student had made a little book out of their own "I'm Talking" poem.



They each started with a very simple word and then found many ways of saying that same thing.

Here are a few examples:


I’m talking happy!
I’m talking excited!
I’m talking glad!
I’m talking joyful, smiley!
I’m talking cheerful, yeah, laughing!
I’m talking happy!

By W



I’m talking silly!
I’m talking funny!
I’m talking ridiculous!
I’m talking hilarious, hysterical!
I’m talking comical, awkward, goofy!
I’m talking foolish, crazy, idiotic, absurd!
I’m talking wild, wiggly, cuckoo, mindless, nonsensical!
I’m talking silly!

By J.A.



I’m talking annoying!
I’m talking bothering!
I’m talking pestering!
I’m talking troublesome, disturbing!
I’m talking distracting, irritating, aggravating!
I’m talking provoking, vexing, unfocused, menacing!
I’m talking harassing, distressing, obnoxious, pesky, irksome!
I’m talking annoying!


By T.A.

The Boston Tea Party Play

Yesterday, the older elementary students invited the younger children to be their audience as they read through their play about the Boston Tea Party.