Week 35 - Praying Mantises and Celebration of Learning
/Last week we were so excited to find that one of our praying mantis egg cases had hatched overnight! There were hundreds of tiny praying mantises spread throughout the enclosure, and we have loved observing them daily. We keep their habitat well supplied with “rain” and Mr. Mark has been adding fruit flies for them to eat. We look forward to watching them grow and releasing them into our outdoor classroom before the school year ends.
Our wagon train has continued to travel along the Oregon Trail. We went through Nebraska, passed Chimney Rock, stopped at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, celebrated the Fourth of July at Independence Rock, and used the South Pass to get through the Rocky Mountains. We have reached Fort Bridger and encountered lots of struggles along the way, just like the pioneers did. One wagon family is very low on food, but a generous classmate was willing to share some of their food so the wagon family didn’t starve. Unfortunately, another wagon family faced an outbreak of cholera and one of their children died from the disease. We have been writing journal entries about our families’ experiences on the journey, and it’s been fun to watch the Sea Lions be so creative and invested in role-playing as these pioneer characters.
In math, we spent the week doing geometry and learning about angles. We learned the difference between acute, obtuse, right, and straight angles, as well as what those types of angles can measure. We also practiced using a protractor to measure angles and to draw angles with specific measurements. Our next geometry focus will be on lines (perpendicular and parallel) and symmetry in shapes.
We have also been working on a welcome poster that will be displayed at the ELC Riddle Walk at Fernhill Wetlands. It includes the tribal land acknowledgement the Sea Lions wrote together earlier in the year. Students have taken turns writing different portions of the poster using their nicest handwriting and decorating it with colors and pictures.
Ms. Megha joined us twice during the week to do some Social-Emotional Learning activities with the Sea Lions. We really enjoyed the team-building games she had us play: an acting game that was like charades and a team challenge to arrange ourselves in age order without falling off the log. The first game helped students practice nonverbal communication with their body language and facial expressions, and the second required students to strategize together, verbally communicate, and support each other.
The ELC Celebration of Learning was a wonderful evening! It was so fun to watch the students share their creations with their families, and I could see how proud they were of their hard work from the past year.
