Feelin' Groovy

After the whole rough mantled doris, ahem... 'gathering' that we had in our tank not too long ago, we were a little gun shy about adding new creatures. But a sea cucumber...no harm there, right? We've had plenty of sea cucumbers in our tank and nothing untoward had happened before.
But as luck would have it, there's something about our tank that just makes the creatures, well, amorous. At first Mr. Finn, who sits directly in front of the tank was like, "Whoa. Look at this sea cucumber! What is it doing? That's so weird!" The kids, of course, rush over to inspect the goings on. Then we saw this:
Ahhhhh! Nothing to see here! Back to your seats! The kids were all: What is THAT. What? That white stuff! White stuff? I don't see any white stuff.
I am, for humor's sake, embellishing. Well. Not that much.

Here. Learn for yourself. Weird reproduction. Take especial note of the 'tiny pore' section.

I am happy to report that soon after this episode, all creatures were released to the wild, and we disassembled the tank for the year. Phew.

STORMS Poster

As a few of the older students made an iMovie using the footage from the fisherman's coffee shop, the rest of the kids worked on compiling data, creating charts and graphs, and organizing it all into two tri-fold posters for our trip to Orono.
Austin and Cadin took all the data gathered by the fishermen about good/bad weather days during the month of April and put it into graph form.
The girls began going through all the data tables that the class had created and began to put it onto the posters. It was a busy afternoon, but very productive!

Is it Spring yet?

We have had very little time in the garden due to cold, wet weather and a super busy schedule, but we did get in there for a little weeding and a bit of transplanting.
Teressa had a lettuce plant that she had grown in the aerogarden was was ready to put in the ground.
The rest of the kids planted peas, beets, radishes, etc. that could handle the chilly weather. They also reinforced the deer fence and mended any sagging areas.
I am happy to report that the peas are already up now and many things are still growing despite the rain and slugfest that we're having this year!

Coffee Shop

Let me start by saying that I am way behind and that this event took place, ahhhh, on May 4th. Sue me, it's the end of the year and I'm just glad that my head is still attached to my neck. This coffee shop was one of our culminating activities for the STORMS program that we've been involved in for a better part of this school year. One of the essential questions we asked was how weather affected Frenchboro, more specifically, how it affects the lobstering industry. Who better to ask than our lobstermen? We gave them some 'homework' to do for the month of April. They had a chart and had to keep track of if it was a good fishing day (regardless of whether or not they went out) or bad day. Then we invited them in for a coffee shop, after checking the weather for the worst day that week...hoping to not interfere with good fishing days. Mr. Finn baked up a storm and we offered cookiebrownies (really, there is such a thing. a lovely thing, I might add), coffeecake and cookies as well as about three gallons of coffee. The turnout was a little sparse, which left us with loads of caffeine and sugar, but we were grateful to the four fishermen who took the time to listen to the kids present their data and answer all their questions regarding weather and its effect on fishing.
They were really good sports, these guys. Jay, Zach, Mikey, and Nate had a lot of good information to offer up about their years of fishing on Frenchboro.
They also listened attentively as the kids shared the massive amount of data they had been collecting since January.
Jayde was not particularly riveted by the whole experience, but she perked up after some coffee. Kidding. Cocoa for the kids.
Thanks again to the fishermen dads and to the kids for being such a professional panel of presenters/interviewers.

GPS Mapping

We're finishing up our culminating projects for the STORMS program so we headed out to the woods to do some GPS mapping of downed trees that had fallen in or over the trails on the island. Seth was armed with his GPS and a smile.
It didn't take long to find a tree down. First, Cody stood and oriented himself toward the tip of the fallen tree and took a compass reading, then he told everyone the degrees and they made waypoints in their GPS: Tree 1-320 for example.
There were no shortage of downed trees across our path, and we only went on two of the many trails here on our island. Suddenly, at the third tree, Cody showed us the compass. The same exact reading. Mr. Finn just smiled. "Those trees probably fell in the same storm." You could have blown us over with a feather. We couldn't believe how incredibly accurate it was. Those trees were like compass needles. So cool!
The bad weather doesn't keep us inside. It's great to get out even if it's drizzling, snowing or foggy.
Because we've all got rubber boots!
The winds were high, waves crashing...so beautiful.
A sure sign of spring: Skunk Cabbage!!

Just Perfect

If one picture could sum up the best of my life here in Frenchboro, this would be it.

Lego Presentation

We had a Lego presentation for the community to show them our robots. The teams could choose to create the fastest robot or the strongest robot and we had three of each, so there was some stiff competition in the school house. Here Austin and Johnny are telling about the process of building their robot to the group.
Saylor's robot was pulling for all it was worth. She came in a close second to Johnny and Austin's robot, but it was neck and neck all the way!
Cadin and Bradley had a little technical difficulties with their robot as some pieces broke loose after four books, but it still gave a good showing.
Here Myron is getting ready to start his robot for the fastest competition. Mr. Finn was manning the stopwatch.
Teressa and Brody were next. I'm not sure what happened here...maybe a bit of a fender bender?
Cody is just getting ready to launch his robot down the track.
It's all about pushing that button as quick as you can!
At the end, the results were so close for fastest robot that the kids had to do all the averaging to the nearest hundredth of a second! The winner: Brody and Teressa by a couple hundredths. Thanks to everyone who came to enjoy the kids hard work. Great job, everybody!