Lego Robotics Club

After school, the 4th, 5th, and 7th graders have been involved in Lego Robotics, a state wide tournament with a math/science focus. Last year, our group won "Most Innovative Design" at the Northern Maine Castine tournament. This year, it's being held in Augusta and the entire state's teams will be represented, so it should be a big turnout.

So many Legos, so little time.

Cody broke his arm, so he's using his teeth. How "innovative"!

Service Learning

As part of our social studies unit, we've been focusing on service learning. Last week, the kids compiled a large list of things that they thought could be improved upon in our school. Today we filtered through the list, and basically came up with four different categories: Building, Buying, Cleaning, Repairing. We sorted the list into the categories and voted on each category, coming up with four or five things from each. They voted by using their sticky notes and then we counted what got the most votes. We decided to focus on the 'buy' list because it might take the longest in terms of planning and fundraising. Their number one? A new bike rack. The one we have doesn't hold children's bikes, and since everyone rides their bikes to school, we literally have a pile of bikes out front all day. We did some research on the web and can I say that there are some crazy weird bike racks out there? Anything that said "custom racks" looked like some strange modern sculpture, so we're sticking with a low slung circular, galvanized rack that will hold 12 bikes, of all different sizes. We came up with some fundraising ideas, too. We'll keep you posted on our progress!

And THIS is why we don't drink pond water.

Well, today we continued our unit on ecosystems, but this time we collected new water samples from the fire pond and brought them back to school. We used our eyedroppers to take drops of water to add to our slides. We saw some amazing and rather alarming things. Here's Bradley using his eyedropper to get his slide ready.

Myron getting his first view through one of the microscopes.

Any guesses? Ant legs. mmmm.

This one was hard to get focused in the viewfinder as it kept zipping around.

Can you see the worm? It's eating a dragonfly larva. Okay, I know it's not very teachery of me, but: YUCK! This gave me the willies. Luckily, I've not been sipping any of this savory beverage.

Ecosystems: Ponds

Some eyes were opened today when it comes to what is actually in pond water. Kids...this is why we don't drink pond water. For all the things you can see with your hand lenses, there are millions of other little creatures you can't see. Next up: using the microscope. Await some mind blowing.

After school we had our very first cross country practice. This might have been the only practice that's ever happened here on Frenchboro. We have two meets planned, one with Isle Au Haut and one with Islesford. Today, we ran up the ingloriously named Dump Hill. Johnny, first grade, huffing beside me, yelling "MY LEGS! THEY'RE BURNING!" Down to the gravel pit and around the beaver pond where Jayde, Kindergarten, saw her very first (in her 'entire life') lily pad, then up to the graveyard with Johnny calling out, "I'm STILL RUNNING!" We rested under the horse chestnut tree, panting, looking around at the red faces (MY FACE IS ON FIRE! Johnny again...and then "I think my rib is BROKEN!") I could have passed out from laughing whilst running today, but luckily I lived to run another day. Perhaps I'll calling it wogging, sort of a walk/jog on my part, though Elijah and Dylan literally ran circles around me. I've gotta get out there more if I'm going to keep up with those kids!

Reading Class

Look at these little worker bees! It does my teacher heart good to see them hard at work, using their knowledge of good reading skills to summarize, support their answers with examples from the text, and clarify words they don't know.

First Day of School

The first day of school is so exciting, especially when it involves new laptop computers! Here's Mr. Finn talking about responsibe usage, and highlighting some exceptional perks.

For P. E. we played our old standby: Kickball. One parent joined us and she ran the bases in flipflops...very impressive. I was tagged out at third by this little one in the blue dress and Mary Janes. Never trust those cute Frenchboro girls...they're deadly on the field!

Summer's end

As summer vacation was coming to a close, Doug, aka Mr. Finn was scrambling around trying to get our house in Cherryfield fully shingled. This 'project' took most of the summer. Methinks we need to actually leave the state of Maine during the summer so that he can actually get some real time off.
Yes, a tablesaw on the roof. He somehow managed to carry it up the stepladder. I'm glad I wasn't watching when that occurred.

Tomorrow is our first official work day (though we've put in well over 100 hours each this summer on curriculum!) and we are so looking forward to the kiddos returning to school. Inservice days are so boring without their smiling faces! They all seem rather on the shy side when we've seen them out and about on the island, so hopefully they'll warm back up as soon as they come back to school. I'll have to post a new photo of them on the first day to show how much they've grown and changed from last year!