Monday Art

We always try to do at least two major school and community service projects per year. This year we're renovating the downstairs bathroom which is a nasty eyesore into a more pleasing and beautiful space. Already the kids put down and grouted tile for the floor during Math class. Now it's time to tackle the walls. When we're done, it's going to seem like you're actually IN the ocean as you sit and do your business in there. Awesome! It's also a way for the kids to make a lasting impression on their school, just like they felt when they built the new playground. This year's community project is to build new picnic tables for Eastern Beach. We've already contacted our Maine Coast Heritage Trust steward, Terry Towne, for the okay, and he said we can have a burn of the old decrepit tables down at the beach, so that will be an excellent incentive (toasted marshmallows, anyone??)
Since the bathroom is tiny, we can only have a few kids down there at a time, so the rest of us did another art project upstairs, a rare treat on a Monday. With the success of the Koi painting, I adapted the Art Projects For Kids lesson to work with warm and cool colors, three dimensional layering and drawing more sea creatures, this time star fish.

These two, Jayde and Tyler have opposing styles and they sit right next to each other, so I always love coming over to see what they're up to. Jayde always has the lightest, most delicate of colors, while Tyler uses the least amount of water color possible to still call it water color. Both beautiful and expressive. The best feeling in the world is to see kids just being comfortable with who they are, not feeling like they have to make theirs look like anyone else's picture. It's a little like handwriting, how you can tell which piece belongs to which student.
I thought the finished products were stunning!
More art for our school walls, for sure.

Water Color Koi Fish

I'm no art teacher, but luckily this woman is and I use her blog often for good ideas for art class that also meet standards that the kids need. This project serves another purpose as well, because we're working on a bathroom mural downstairs and it's going to have an undersea theme (go figure), so we need some practice drawing and painting anything aquatic.
I really love the contrasting hues and how the crayon resist not only gives a sharp outline, but also helps keep the watercolors in check.
I love the uniqueness of every single art project we do...every kid is working on the same thing, but they all have their own style and the finished products are always so diverse.
Some kids go really dark and heavy with the color saturation, while others keep it light by adding lots of water.
These are definitely going up on our walls to add some more color and life...reminding us that spring colors will soon be blooming.

March Madness: Crazy Hair Day

Crazy Hair Day is always a fun one. You never know what you're going to see. Several of the kids announce early on that they're growing their hair out from Crazy Hair Day back in, say January, which doesn't always fly with the parents.
There were some gravity defying spectacles, and some interesting color changes.
Mr. Finn has been growing the beard out special just so he could do a pirate look.
Then Brody walks in with a hat on, pauses, whips off the hat, exclaiming: I'm Doug Finn! Well, we nearly died. I could not believe he did that, shaved right off the top, right to the bone. Hilarious! I gotta say, though...he needs to work on growing some serious facial hair if he wants to look like Doug Finn!

March Madness: Pajama Day and Skype Around the World Day

It was Pajama Day on Thursday, so we all dressed appropriately. It just so happened that this was also the day that we had two Skypes scheduled, one to scientists currently aboard a research vessel near Antarctica, and another to the Chignik Lake school on the Alaskan Aleutian chain.
First up we sent a message to Ben, one of the scientists, to see if they were ready for the call. Ben came out to Frenchboro several months ago to work with the kids on zooplankton. He's aboard this vessel traveling from South Africa to Western Australia for more than a month. So jealous.
If you want to read more of their work, click here.

Next up, we called a small school in Alaska and talked to the kids at their small school. Click here to learn more about Chignik Lake. We had let all our guests know we were celebrating March Madness...just in case they wondered why Tyler had on Incredible Hulk jammies.

March Madness: Read A Book Day

Read A Book day, it turns out, was one of my favorite days, like...ever. The kids were encouraged to bring in all their comfy things from home: pillows, blankets, sleeping bags, bean bag chairs, whatever. I brought my blowup Aerobed and a pillow and blanket, as well as two books I'm reading, one a no-dig method of organic gardening, and No Child Left in the Woods, which I can only handle in small doses because I find it infinitely depressing, yet an important read. The kids all brought their books in as well and the first hour of school was simply: Find a comfy spot and read. Well. That comfy spot happened to be on the Aerobed! I was like: Hey! What's up with this?! Get your own bed. But they piled on like a pack of puppies. It got so crowded I gave up and sat in a chair! Kicked off my own bed!
I thought it was going to be like pulling teeth, all this sitting around and reading, so I brought lots of snacks, too. They didn't need bribery, though. They were psyched! They kept exclaiming about something that was happening in their book, which I absolutely love to hear about. They do this every morning as they come into school, telling me about their homework book they are currently reading. I'm the kid who was reading under the covers by flashlight, so it doesn't take much for me to get excited about books.
After recess I read aloud from Jack Gantos, my favorite new children's lit. author. He won the Newberry Medal for Dead End in Norvelt so I started reading that to them. I got laughing so loud I was snorting and tears were streaming down my face. Priceless. Seth, oops, I mean Rotten Ralph (we all chose our favorite characters to be for the day) kept exclaiming, "That is so disgusting!" A surefire sign I picked a winner.

After lunch, I was afraid they were all read out, but they ran in and jumped on the bed or in their chairs, grabbed their books and started reading without any prompting. We read for another 45 minutes and I snuck out to set up a rhyming game outside. We took a break, ate some snack, and went out to play the game and then did another reading game about nouns and verbs before I read to them some more and we ended with a short silent read. The time flew by and Rotten Ralph said it was the best day of his life. Professor McGonagle thought it was pretty swell herself.

Math Day Activities

Mr. Composite listed all of the potential Math related activities that the kids could choose from throughout the day. One of the things they voted on was a multi-step problem race. Every students was given a card with nine math problems based upon ability level. They raced to get the problem done, get downstairs and search for the answer amidst a flurry of different answer cards scattered on note cards stuck to desks, find the shape that was drawn on the answer card, rush back upstairs and draw the correct shape next to their work on each problem. I was the traffic cop making sure nobody collided on the way up and down. It was very...busy. They were in a sweat.
Next up, they split into two different teams, given the task of building the tallest tower in an allotted time. Each group had a matching set of blocks to work with.
It started out pretty mellow and quickly worked itself into a panicked frenzy of activity as the clock ticked down. There were some casualty towers, toppling in a great crash that nearly scared the ears off Hoppers.
By the end, both teams had won one time each, so they were pretty evenly matched.
Another activity had to do with problem solving their way across a 'river full of alligators and piranha (had to look that up...I knew there was an "h" in there somewhere). The bridge consisted of 2 x 4s and 2 x 6s placed upon various 'rocks' in the river. If anyone fell in they had to go back to the start, which made it challenging when most of the kids were already across and had to go back and put the boards back to help the stragglers. Even more challenging was when the 5th and 6th graders were not allowed to touch any of the bridges with their hands, but they were able to give directions. They were ultimately successful, but boy that took some effort!

March Madness: Math Day

Disclaimer: This is not a joke. So, for March Madness, the kids voted for what they wanted to do every day of the week. I get to pick one of the days every year because it's my birthday. I pick Pajama Day. A no-brainer. Well, last year when the kids made the list of possibles, there were things like Crazy Hair Day and Toga Day. Then, for some ultra-bizarre reason, someone came up with Quiet Day. Seriously. A day of no talking. Every teacher's dream. I thought, "Well, that's not gonna fly." Nope. They all voted on it, unanimously. So we had Quiet Day last year and they were completely silent all day. We all used white boards to talk to each other. It was fabulous.
So, this year, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We started brainstorming and Quiet Day went up pretty quickly. Then, wonder of wonders, someone suggested Math Day. For real. What's up with that? Where does that even come from? Never in my wildest dreams as a kid would I have come up with Math Day when brainstorming ideas for March Madness. I thought again, "Well, that's not gonna fly." But then immediately checked myself and said, "Yeah. They'll all probably vote for that one." Sure enough. Math Day it was. And that's not all. Read a Book Day, suggests Saylor. It goes up on the board. And I of course get the Queen's birthday vote and vote for Pajama Day. Last up? Crazy Hair Day. Okay, so there's some hope for these kids yet.
So, what the heck to do on Math Day? Math class, like ALL day long? That just did not sound appealing to either Mr. Finn, or myself. Or should I say Mr. Composite? Cause of course we kicked off the morning with new Math names. Tyler? He wanted to be 8. Like, just plain number 8. We had Multiplication and Division (Cadin and Johnny, who sit right next to each other.) Then we had Seth as "Cube" and my personal favorite, Bradley as "The Ruler". How awesome is that, being called The Ruler all day? So funny.

What was my name? Well, my inner geek really comes out here, but I'm a huge Transformers fan so I was: Mrs. Prime. So Mr. Finn was Mr. Composite. The kids had a hard time saying Mr. Composite, so everyone was talking to me because Mrs. Prime was much easier to say. I was a little partial to Cube, being Mrs. Prime, with his, you know, creational powers and all.