If you had strolled through the classroom last week, you would have heard the Beatles wafting from the outdoors, seen the most interesting projects on the natural sciences of Virginia, smelled the most delicious aroma of homemade soup drifting in from the kitchen, and felt the love being created through hand-made Valentines and poetry.
Some of the fifth and sixth grade boys created a band, "Revolution," and rehearsed all week to play a Beatles tune at Hearthstone's "Open-Mic Night." The rehearsals were taken seriously and deligently, and their performance last Friday night was truly outstanding! I am definitely thinking that I can say, "I knew them when!"
The students worked hard on the Virginia reports dealing with animals, topography, ecosystems, and pollution. It always amazes me to see the creativity that evolves from their research. The older students are to be especially recognized for their thoughtful and careful work in helping the younger students with their projects.
The poems on love by the first and second graders were brilliant. For example, did you know that ... love tastes like flower-flavored cookies? Love sounds like harps. Love feels like your baby brother's blanket. Love is red like a rose. Love is calm like flowing water. Love is nice!
Who knew we had such culinary artists among us? This week the fifth graders, with the help of Mrs. Brown, made the most delicious black bean soup, biscuits, and chocolate chip cookies. My Friday night dinners have never been so good!
Of course in the midst of all of this, we were ... catching up on math tests; discovering ratios and how they are relevant to our world; making connections between the binomial formation and distributive law; and finding out how some values have special qualities that make them squares or cubes.
It is never a dull day in the elementary!
December 8, 2008
The first trimester finished with spurts of great energy and work. The students have refreshed their math minds, writing skills, imagination, test-taking skills, and research techniques. The older students were working nonstop on handmade puppets of characters created from the books they are reading for literature groups. We have pondered what it would be like to be the characters in Verdi's opera, "Rigoletto." We all listened to the storms on Mars from "The Planets Suite" by Holst. The younger students have moved to the tunes, "La Mer" and the "Grand Canyon Suite." Many students are eagerly preparing for the Winter Performance! Some students had great fun growing their own mold for a science experiment.Others had fun growing plants from seeds they collected on their socks on a hike through the woods. It was determined in an experiment that the plants that were given minerals grew better than those that were not. All students worked hard to get in the holiday spirit and create pictures and poetry for Samuel's Library Holiday Writing Contest. The remaining days before Thanksgiving break, we refreshed our memories to the words and tune of "Over the River and Through the Woods." We also reminded ourselves why we are so grateful and created beautiful mandala posters. All were most grateful for their families!
October 27, 2008 Please come visit and observe!There is such joy and great work happening right now.There are also, of course, social conflicts, which can be even more amazing to watch and see how they are handled.I want all parents to be able to experience it and ask questions!Not a lot of paperwork goes home, so it is essential that you come and see to understand how much enthusiastic work is completed in a day. We start our day with some brain gym, a song, and a story about the people who created our country and lived in Virginia.It is amazing for us to connect the names of the counties, cities, schools, buildings, etc., to the people who started this country, by living bravely, demanding independence, and the pursuit of happiness. The new students have heard all the Great Stories and are following up by working on the timelines, charts, and experiments that support the theories.In language, they are learning and acting out the parts of speech through the grammar boxes.We are currently into the adjective boxes and will be starting the verb grammar boxes by the end of the week.Handwriting is always being practiced with an occasional spelling test.We have been thinking about the parts of a story: beginning, middle, and end.All of the new students love to read and can be seen throughout the day sharing a book they've taken off the shelf.In math they have been learning about multiples, division with Racks and Tubes, factors with the Factor Board, multiplication with the Chequerboard, and daily practice of math facts.In geography we have recently seen how solutions can be combined and separated.In botany we have been studying the parts of the plant with the most recent being the parts of the fruit, using a peach.They are always surprised to find the seed in the endoderm (the pit).In geometry a lot of time has been spent comparing and creating polygons that are similar, congruent, and equivalent.In music we've been practicing rhythm—4-beat measures of students' names, items in the room, etc.There has been a lot of work done with tertiary and secondary colors with paint in art.The students love mixing their own colors. The rest of the students have been hard at work on their reports.The third and fourth graders have been practicing more advanced lessons on the Chequerboard, Racks and Tubes, and the Flat Bead Frame, preparing them for doing the work abstractly later in the year.In science we have had great interest in experiments that explore the states of matter.Everyone has a plant experiment in which they are dutifully taking care of its needs with mineral water or distilled water.In language the students are studying the parts of a sentence with the Logical Analysis materials.They sound like college students when discussing the parts.They have also been working very hard on writing clear paragraphs.In geometry we have been discussing and making polyhedrons.In music we have been reaffirming our knowledge of the notes.Most recently we have been trying to read the notes with a Bass Clef. The older students have been busy giving lessons, keeping up with their weekly math tests, working on their history projects, and repeating their own lessons.There has been a lot of interaction between the two classrooms which has ignited great work.In music we have been trying to read intervals without counting the lines and spaces.(Felicity's idea!)We studied the composer Pocielle and his great opera La Gioconda. They had great fun acting out some of the characters.We have been spending a lot of time finding the area of all different geometric shapes.In physical science we have been studying atoms, molecules, elements, compounds, chemical changes, and exploring great experiments with the states of matter.They are really working hard on writing their history report with an introductory paragraph, supportive paragraphs, and a good conclusive paragraph.In word study this week, we worked hard learning the "1-1-1 Rule" (one syllable, one consonant, one vowel—then you double the consonant when you add a suffix).Math lessons are many and keep them busy.In the last week they learned how to find the prime factors, the least common multiple, and the greatest common factor.This week we are diving into fractions and have started by raising them first.
