Week 35 - Praying Mantises and Celebration of Learning

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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.

Week 34 - Oregon Trail Travels and Wagon Art

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This week our wagon families finished shopping for supplies in Independence, MO, and logging all our purchases and food amounts on our tracking sheets (involving lots of addition and multiplication). Then we started our journey on the Oregon Trail. We crossed the Kansas River, went hunting and fishing for additional food resources, and arrived at Fort Kearny, NE. Each part of our journey requires us to roll the dice to see what happens to our wagon on the trail. Here are some of the situations our various families encountered: getting stuck in the mud and losing travel days, breaking a wagon wheel, an ox getting injured, finding an abandoned wagon with supplies to take, having great weather and traveling in fewer days, and more! We determined how much food our wagon families ate over the amount of days we traveled and had to subtract that from our totals. We also spent time learning about some of the challenges pioneers really faced during their journeys, reading actual journal entries, and learning about what Fort Kearny was like. The Sea Lion gathered around the campfire and wrote another entry in their trail journals to role-play as their pioneer character, describing what the journey has been like for their wagon family so far.

For an art activity, we drew covered wagons and now we are using oil pastels to color the background to look like a sunset on the prairie. We are learning and practicing how to make a gradient effect with the colors and blend them into one another.

Our math studies this week were focused on perimeter of rectangles. We practiced finding the missing side length when we have the total perimeter and one of the sides. We also used the geoboards to practice finding the perimeter of irregular rectangular shapes (and some Sea Lions created beautiful designs on the geoboards during our read-aloud time). Our final work with perimeter involved some tricky irregular rectangular shapes where some of the side lengths are missing and we had to visualize moving portions of the edges out to fill a larger rectangle. It’s hard to describe, but you should ask your Sea Lion to show you their latest math packet to see how hard they worked! We finished the week playing math games on Friday, and we each got to try a new game on the iPads called “Dragonbox Algebra.”

We enjoyed celebrating with Finn for his birthday this week too! We made him a card and wrote compliments and description words about him on the whiteboard. Ms. Megha joined us a few times and taught us about the Zones of Regulation. We brainstormed a list of ways we can manage our emotions and get back into a state where we’re ready to learn at school. We also had fun acting out some scenarios related to our emotions (followed by some other “just for fun” acting).

The majority of Sea Lions and Otters students have been spending Project Exploration time either sharing and discussing their Pokemon cards (lots of communication and compromising) or working on a production of “The Wizard of Oz.” This has been 100% student-led: planning, scripts, directing, acting, costumes, props, etc. They performed it for classmates and teachers on Wednesday, and we were all so impressed with how great they did that we offered them the option to perform the play for the rest of the ELC on the stage in Taylor Meade hall. They are excited for this opportunity and already started working on painting sets and gathering more props. The play will likely be performed on June 10th (we’re just waiting on confirmation that the stage is reserved for us). During outside choice time, students have been hunting for insects, making “food” in their tree-stump kitchen, engaging in imaginative play about superheroes, and organizing games of touch football. A few students even got to meet a sweet puppy who was on a walk through campus!

Additional Photos

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Here are some extra photos Ms. Aja took of the Sea Lions last week.

Week 33 - Beginning the Oregon Trail

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This last week we finished up our studies of the Corps of Discovery and then made connections to how the Lewis and Clark Expedition led to the westward expansion of settlers across the United States via the Oregon Trail. We began a new unit about the Oregon Trail that will include a role-playing simulation where each Sea Lion is in charge of their own wagon, supplies, and choices as we journey from Independence, Missouri to Oregon. The students enjoyed creating their own characters with unique pioneer names, and planning what other family members are part of their wagon (with names, ages, and relationships). They have determined what occupation their wagon leader had and created a backstory for their characters to explain where they are coming from and why they want to move west. We created new journals for reflecting on our Oregon Trail journey, and wrote our first entry that is all about our characters, families, and backstories. We also learned about covered wagons and oxen, and then we measured out the size of a covered wagon and taped an outline of it in our classroom. Since we’ve been learning how to find the area of rectangles in our math lessons, we practiced our new skill and determined that the area of the wagon bed was 40 square feet. Some of us were able to extend that concept into solving the volume of the wagon as well. We started planning out the supplies we need to purchase for our journey and fitting those into our family’s budget. We’ll continue shopping for supplies this next week and then begin traveling to our first stop on the Oregon Trail.

The Sea Lions finished writing and editing their opinion essays this week, and on Friday we took some time to read them out loud to the rest of the class. One of our book club groups finished reading their novel, Class Dismissed, and they had their final group discussion and got to fill out book review sheets to share what they liked about the story. We spent the week learning about area of rectangles and practicing finding the area of irregular shapes as well (by breaking them into smaller rectangles and adding the areas of each one together). We had fun using the geoboards to create shapes and then challenging classmates to solve the area of those shapes. Next week, we’ll work on finding the perimeter of irregular shapes.

Our resident Occupational Therapy guru, Ms. Megha, joined us on Thursday to show the Sea Lions some fun games and activities that will strengthen their fine motor skills. Students have been enjoying the sunshine outside, playing badminton, learning touch football, “baking” mud treats, and playing imaginative games with the Otters. A group of Sea Lion and Otter students have started planning and directing their own play version of “The Wizard of Oz” during Project Explorations, and other students developed a new interest in Pokemon cards. We are all getting excited as we count down to the end of the school year, but we’re still enjoying all the fun learning and explorations we get to do together.

Week 32 - Corps of Discovery Studies and Mother’s Day Gifts

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This past week we dug a little deeper into some of the topics related to the Corps of Discovery. We learned about the disappointment when Lewis reached the Continental Divide and realized there was no Northwest Passage (a water route connecting rivers across the U.S.) but just the giant Rocky Mountains to cross. We explored the concept of a continental divide by experimenting with a model of mountains, rivers, and rain in our Cedar Classroom sandbox. The Sea Lions also had fun performing a reader's theater scene together that covered the momentous occasions when the Corps of Discovery reached the Pacific Ocean and when they all voted on where to build their fort to camp for the winter. Even York and Sacagawea were included in the vote, because Lewis and Clark recognized how they were all equal members contributing to the success of the Expedition!

In math, we wrapped up our chapter on decimal numbers. Next week, we’ll begin learning about area and perimeter. We put our opinion writing on hold for a few days while we worked on some poetry instead. The Sea Lions put their hearts into creating beautiful poems or letters about their moms, and adding art and decorations in their own unique styles. We enjoyed mixing up some bath salts with custom scents and colors to give to our moms as well. Happy Mother’s Day from the Sea Lions!

We have a new habitat in our classroom with several praying mantis egg cases. We are anxiously waiting for them to hatch, and the Sea Lions have been observing the habitat each day and taking great care to make sure it gets “rained on” regularly. The Sea Lions have been enjoying doodling and working on art pieces or puzzles in their spare time lately. We also had a fun puppet show performance during Project Exploration time.