Johnny's Book Club

guest Blogger bradley

Hi my name is Bradley and i took a picture of this trophy case. It is special to me because it has every thing that we have earned in cross country and lego Robotics. I hope we get more trophys next year.

Teressa's Book Club

Guest Blogger: Teressa

Hi I am Teressa and I am in fourth grade. I am really looking forward to the holiday program
at 6:30 tonight. You all are welcome to come. The show will be really cool. And I am an elf so you should be really good this year.

Gusting

Mr. Finn set our weather station to let out a warning beep when the winds are gusting 40 mph or higher. It's singing a little tune this morning! We're keeping our fingers crossed for a white Christmas, but right now it's not looking good...rain and high winds out there. There goes the pond ice!

O Christmas Tree

Here are Myron and Mr. Finn putting lights on our tree. The rest of the kids were making ornaments to hang. Glitter and lots of it, being the key word here.





It's blurry, but without the flash, you can really see the lights. What a great addition to our library! And notice we already have some presents under there. Several kids were exclaiming that it was "SO hard not to look at them!"

Ice Checker

This is why we always have Mr. Finn check the ice. Not quite there yet, but we can taste hockey in the air!

Cutting Down the Tree

Oh, you remember the days...You and your teachers took a walk through the woods to cut down the school Christmas tree. Right? Right? yeah...me neither. And as usual...it ain't Frenchboro if we're not bushwhacking. Lots of nice trees right. by. the road. But no...we headed for the dead tree snag field. I blame Joe.
And then, miraculously, they found a balsam fir! We have enormous amounts of red and white spruce on our island, but not so many fir...I think because the deer find them delicious.
Joe and the kids cutting down the tree. It is, as most 'natural' trees...a little deformed. Okay, a lot deformed. C'mon now you Charlie Brown Christmas fans...this tree just needs a little love. And a lot of ornaments.
The kids could not have been happier with themselves. Look at Seth and Johnny. Ta Daaaa! This is possibly when several of the branches were actually ripped from the tree.
So stinkin' funny! And cute! Don't you want to have 12 kids now and go cut your own tree down? We rent them out.
We don't promise that delivery will not destroy your tree.

Just...shove it in there!

New Name

I am no longer Ms. Finn. Just call me the zipper queen or glove tucker. Winter clothes, ahhh, how we love them.

Santa's Coming

Just wanted to whet your appetite for our upcoming holiday program...

We might have created a monster here. Apparently he's sure he's going to take over for Santa when he's older. He showed me his stomach the other day and pointing to the belly, went, "Ms. Finn...see this? Milk and cookies. Milk and cookies, that's all I want."

Local Talent

So, Jackie, our neighbor, has been hiding her talents from us. Well, the cat's out of the bag now. She did this incredible sign for us after the Lego tournament that just blew my mind, so of course I was like....Heeeey, so. You busy? Wanna make us a Kingfishers sign? So her husband Charlie dropped this off this morning. Holy Hannah, I dream about this kind of talent! To not just be able to draw well, but to create the cool play on words with kingfisher and our obvious lobstering population...I love it! We're having this framed over Christmas. And, if this 'disappears' mysteriously from the school...


I took it.

Lego Tournament 2010

The kids doing their presentation on frostbite in front of the judges.
Talking about robot design with a judge.
All of us feeling pretty happy to have made it into the semifinals.
Our cheering section.
Saylor and Austin competing on the table.
I had to get a picture of this, as we were in first place for a while there! After all the teams had gone, we dropped to third place going into the semi-finals. Very exciting!
Cody and Brody doing their round with the robot.
Our team with their medals. They were pretty disappointed that they didn't make it to the finals, but we finished 8th overall in the state, so Mr. Finn and I were very proud! Great job, kids!!

These kids were truly dedicated and hard working...they have been practicing about 5 hours per week since school started!

Guest Dog

Our dog, Terrapin, is visiting the school this morning. We don't bring him in very often as he's highly distracting, as you can see, but we don't have a vehicle on island right now and we're all leaving after lunch for our Lego trip, so we brought him with us to avoid the walk back to our house. And no, we did not dock his ears...Mr. Finn got him when he was in The Gambia for the Peace Corps. The tribe in Africa docks the ears to prevent infection from bugs during the rainy season. Terrapin is a Basenji, so he can't bark, but as Johnny will attest...he can seriously whine when he wants to be petted...which is like...all the time. He doesn't love the school because there is no couch.

Countdown to Lego Tournament

The kids did their Lego demonstration for the community last night. This is their skit about frostbite, which addresses the Body Forward theme that this year's Lego tournament covers. Just hearing Dr. Saylor saying "Two 50 cc syringes, STAT!" is hilarious.
Then they went downstairs to show the robot in action. There were some nerves apparent, but it was good practice to have to demonstrate in front of an audience.
There are three rounds, so three chances to get the highest score possible. We have three 'teams' so that every kid gets a chance to compete. Here are Dylan and Teressa lining up the robot and getting the correct program ready.
Then it was Cody and Brody's turn. We're keeping our fingers crossed for a high score at this years tournament on Saturday!

Yogis

Okay, I know we've been doing yoga for three years now, but is it just me or is this boy freakishly flexible? His arms are inverted for Pete's sake! Now THIS is a serious camel pose to rival any yogi or yogini out there.

Cadin's iMovie Book Club

We're doing so much with technology this year that all the kids can video and edit using iMovie. Cadin did all the editing himself, adding the text and transitions. Pretty cool for a 7 year old!

We Love Winter!

Sooo...the first real snow of the year. What should we do for P. E.?
Walking in a winter wonderland.
All the snow was perfectly placed on the trees.
Which led us to do one of our favorite things.
The snow dump!
Lots of screaming. And laughing. And running around like crazy people. Mr. Finn got us into this during our walks. There is most definitely a five year old boy trapped in his grown-up body. Well...maybe 8 year old.
She smiled for me! She actually posed and gave me a little grin. I was so proud of myself. She must have been Super happy to be out in the woods!
Like these hooligans. Seriously...this group comes knockin' on the door and you close the shades! Look at the mischief and delight in those eyes. I was freaking out a little because my camera was dying on me and I knew there were going to be the best shots on earth...so I took as many as I could, as fast as I could.
Like this one. He did this to himself, folks. Plopped right down under that tree and shook the branches!
Thank goodness none of them have white coats. This was the scene as we traipsed through the woods. They'd all spontaneously throw themselves into the bushes, pretending they were deer or otter, or all manner of beasts. And yes, that's my husband...right there in the front with them. I told you....five years old.

STORMS

Getting off-island in the wintertime is always a little challenging, especially when you don't own a boat. But thankfully, we know a lot of people who do own boats, and two of them helped us out this past weekend as we had to get to a conference in Walpole. It was the next class to get us all up to speed for the STORMS program. There were a lot of talented scientists to share their knowledge with us.
And we got to see some familiar faces! Here's Jessie from Monhegan, and Paula from Isle au Haut. It's always nice to see and meet other island teachers, as we don't get together very often.
Look at those teachers raising their hands! Overachievers!
This was a rather alarming presentation about the effects from global warming that we're already experiencing, and can expect to experience in the near future. At this point, scientists are in agreement about climate change happening, and unfortunately it is happening even quicker than predicted. There are a lot of causes, and it is a natural occurrence in the geologic record, but this time around, we humans are pitching in with lots of carbon in the atmosphere, among other things. If the water continues to warm, de-salinate, and acidify.....we can kiss our lobster industry goodbye, so I was very alert for this particular talk! Another thing we can expect is more frequent and serious storms. The prediction for Maine is that, on a conservative estimate, we would be like the mid-Atlantic states, or even more likely...the same climate as Virginia!

Tourney Bound

Well, we got the Lego Robotics t-shirts. Though we're officially the Frenchboro Kingfishers, we had already registered as the Sea Monsters for our Lego Robotics tournament, so that's why they've got a rockin' monster on the front. All the 4-8th graders are on the team, but since we were sponsored by the Frenchboro fishermen, all the dads got t-shirts for the younger kids, too.
The back has the boat names of all the fishermen who sponsored our team (including Cody, Myron and Brody!) So great! We're very excited about our upcoming tournament in Augusta. 51 teams! Yikes! Wish us luck as we head off on Thursday to compete.