Week 10 -- The votes are in

Our warm-up for Wednesday morning. There was a lot of stress in the air.  

Week 9 -- Yanomami mythology

Week 8 -- Myth and culture

Juna, a Summers-Knoll alum, visited us recently. She was part of the class that started our monarch and milkweed project, so we ceremonially tagged her with a monarch sticker before sending off on her way. 

Week 7 - Where we've been, where we're going

We go outside unless the weather is truly dangerous, which means we endure the occasional rain shower. This inspired some kids to come up with a hands-free way to hold umbrellas. 

Week 6 -- Milkweed hunt, rising tigers, and graphing caterpillars

Scenes from a milkweed scouting mission

Week 5 -- Monarch release!

This week saw a grand finale of sorts as we assembled the combined 5/6 classes on the playground to do a mass release of the many monarchs that we have shepherded from caterpillar to butterfly. This is the generation of monarchs who will work their way all the way down to Northern Mexico, where they will spend the winter. When spring arrives, their offspring will begin working their way north again. All of the monarchs released from Summers-Knoll have been tagged by students, so our fingers are crossed that we may one day get word of where they end up.

STATE OF THE BLOG

Cleaning the bus after the 2015-2016 Spring Trip

Greetings friends, families, and well-wishers! This is a quick post to let you know how I plan to use the blog this year. It's a little different than in previous years. 

If you are a current Summers-Knoll family, you are hopefully receiving a weekly email from the school with a letter from the Head of School, important dates and information, and brief curriculum updates from each of the faculty. Our hope is that the updates in that weekly email will give you a glimpse into our classroom, as well as a peek into your child's previous and future classrooms. (Also, a lot of cool things happen here, so we're hoping you'll take a look and spread the word.) 

Those updates, however, don't include the many photos and videos that are taken all week. So I plan to use the blog to repost those weekly updates, accompanied by photos (and occasionally videos, relevant links, etc). 

In addition to that, I plan on posting a more in-depth entry about what we're up to about once a month. My hope is to give you some insight into not only what we do, but why. 

Please feel free to comment or email whenever the mood strikes you. Thanks for reading about our class! 

(NOTE: If you subscribe to this blog by email, you've likely noticed that this is the fifth post I've made today. Sorry about that! In the future, they'll be paced in a much more reasonable manner.) 

A panorama of our classroom on the first day of school