Oregon Cascades, River as Provider and Celebration of Community

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The Sea Lions had a magical week of learning that culminated in a joyous Celebration of Community.

We started our week talking about the importance of rivers and water, and explored more deeply the Native American belief that all of life is connected and each living thing is in some way responsible for the life of another. As we further investigated the Native American notion of River as The Great Provider, we marked the major rivers on our Oregon map, worked to create a compass rose and talked about cardinal and ordinal directions. Later in the week, we studied the oral stories of Native American First Foods and listened to first-hand accounts of Native American First Salmon Feasts.

On Wednesday we worked to complete our Oregon Cascade art maps. We learned techniques of watercolor blending that made our finished work look absolutely stunning. The Sea Lions are so proud of the time and effort they put into their art!

On Thursday night we celebrated the amazing work we’ve completed in just a little over 6 weeks. The Sea Lion classroom was a buzz of activity as proud students shared their work with the people they love most. What an incredible community we’ve already created together!

Funky Fairy Tales, Oregon Geology and Native Peoples

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What a jam-packed week it has been! The Sea Lions performed their perspective-taking Funky Fairy Tale skits to a rapt audience of ELC students. Our Sea Lions showed great skill and poise and were thrilled with the feeling of accomplishment they shared!

We started our Oregon history and geography unit by digging into the history of our Native American tribes. We listened to oral stories told by the Kalapuya, Coos, Mollala and Taklema tribes and talked about the importance of oral storytelling to hand down customs, values, skills and geography since time immemorial. We spent time creating our own oral stories and are excited to share them next week.

After reading First People’s accounts of major geologic events, we referred to Native Americans as our First Geologists, understanding that their stories were a way to bind them to the land and make sense of the world around them. In order to understand the geologic events that current-day scientists believe led to the formation of Oregon’s major mountain ranges, Mr. Mark gave a captivating presentation on the geologic processes that form mountains.

On Friday we began an artist study of graphic artist and map-maker Elizabeth Person. We used her watercolor and ink map of the Oregon Cascades as inspiration for our first map, talking about the volcanoes that line the Cascade Range, noticing differences in shape, elevation and more. We will add watercolor next week.

Sea Lions Practice Optimism and Gratitude

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As the Sea Lions wrapped up their unit of study on the brain and mindfulness, we explored the benefits of practicing gratitude and optimism. We learned that neuroscientists are finding that those individuals who practice optimism and gratitude are able to concentrate more effectively, solve problems more easily, lead happier lives and maintain better friendships. We all agreed that those were some things that were important to us, and we wanted to practice! We worked together to create a classroom list titled Our Best Ways To Stay Optimistic. It’s a great reference tool for us to use daily! We also worked together to create a list of ideas to use when we needed to take a Gratitude Walk (a go-to response to use if we’re extra overwhelmed, angry, sad or frustrated). Our shared list is pretty amazing. We invite you to try a Gratitude Walk today!

Mindful Seeing, Art, Movement and Fun!

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The Sea Lions continued their study of the brain this week, learning about our sense of sight and how messages travel from our optic nerves to our cortex. Dr. Mari Fujimoto from Pacific’s College of Optometry took us through various activities and hands-on experiments that helped us think about the way that our sense of sight helps us function and learn. We talked about the way that mindful seeing (looking deeply at our work and our world) helps us to be more attentive to things going on around us.

We continue to work hard in our small math groups, focusing on the multiple ways of seeing numbers, exploring the commutative and associative properties of multiplication and addition. We are experimenting using open number lines, ratio tables, tiles arrays and area arrays to show our mathematical thinking.

Our Writing Interactive Notebooks are taking shape as we explore complete sentences, compound sentences, the structure of a paragraph (including topic sentences, key details, rockin’ beginnings and more). We’re using what we know to continue to edit our Personal Autobiographies this week.

Our week concluded with a Freakishly Fun Friday. We finished our 3/4 view self portraits in the style of Van Gogh, and they are magnificent. We put the final coat of glaze on our pencil cups and we can’t wait to see the finished product. And we’re learning learning a new song with rhythm sticks. Sarasponda is so much fun!

Sea Lions Learn The Magic Of Mindfulness

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The Sea Lions continued to study the benefits of mindfulness and meditation this week, putting more tools in their cerebration tool box. We looked more deeply into the ways that our breath can help us reframe situations by pausing and practicing the art of perspective-taking, understanding for a moment that another’s perspective can be different from ours. We’re putting this practice to work as we re-write traditional fairy tales, highlighting the perspective of another character as we create small “Funky Fairytale” skits in small groups.

On Friday, we were honored to have a visit from Pacific’s Psychology Department and Mindfulness Clinic. Dr. Michael Christopher, Dr. Emily Nava Bower and Doctoral Candidate Marissa Ferry came to talk to us about their work with police officers and marginalized communities. We learned about the ways that the practice of mindfulness can help adults in highly stressful situations make good decisions and lead happier, more connected lives. We learned three new sitting meditations too!

Along with all of the brain work we’re doing, the Sea Lions still had time to sing and dance together, celebrate a birthday, do some challenging math together, learn about the steps of writing a proper paragraph in our autobiographies, begin some challenging (and fun!) 3/4 view self-portraits inspired by Van Gogh, and so much more. I hope you can see the blossoming community we’re creating together in the photos below!

Sea Lion's Stellar First Week Together!

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Our first eight days together and already the Sea Lions have become a tight community of learners and friends. We started our time together by exploring the Limbic System, delving into parts of the brain that help us concentrate, regulate our emotions, hold memories and learn. We had a special visit from ELC parent and Pacific professor Ms. Liesel who talked to us about neuroscience and the anatomy of our brain. The Sea Lions were fascinated by the human and animal brains she brought for us to examine. As the week progressed, we participated in skits and activities that further deepened our understanding of the role of the Amygdala, Prefrontal Cortex, Hippocampus, Reticular Activating System, neurons, synapses and more. We are learning how our “Pause Breath” is the magic antidote for finding calm and regulation, even in the most stressful times.

We began brainstorming and organizing our thoughts for our autobiographies and are working to understand proper sentence and paragraph structure. We are becoming Word Wizards, analyzing the rules of spelling and morphology to help us become better readers and writers.

We started exploring math in a big way, splitting into two groups, looking at the Egyptian Numerical System and multiplication arrays, practicing use of the commutative and associative properties, graphing and more. We made a pact to work together to grow a math community that listens, respects one another’s differences, is patient and kind, and celebrates the wonder of math.

Along with all of this, we found time to complete some collage art on our new writing and reading notebooks, create some pretty amazing rainbow-symmetry-name-art and begin work on a ceramics project. Wow!

Of course, twice a day we’re lucky enough to explore the Cedar Classroom, and play rousing games of Monkey In The Middle out in the quad on Pacific’s beautiful Campus.

We are so excited for what this year will bring, and we’re thrilled to be going on this new adventure together!