Saplings Core Sept 29 - Oct 1

This week we introduced our teaching of happiness. Students learned about it, shared about it and we read a story today called "Very Noisy Bear". Students were easily able to identify instances of happiness characters in the story shared AND they identified our other teachings to date as well.

Our morning exercises were very successful this week with the addition of a personal clicking checklist for students to track their morning progress. This week we got elbow deep into personal math lessons (types of lines, multiplication, number words, types of angles), writing and typing responses to our foundational teachings, cursive practice (we are now into writing cursive letters from printed examples), and we had our very first spelling test! Results were great and many stickers were handed out today.

Cribbage and Crib Wars ensued Monday and Tuesday once tasks were completed. Wednesday, students chose to look at a book together about interesting ocean animals.

Our afternoons were full of learning too! On Monday Abby suggested making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and we had just enough ingredients to do so! We even added googly eyes to our cookies. Now, each day when we are complete with our learning, we get a cookie on our way out.

Tuesday afternoon we investigated the garden and made a list of everything we could harvest for our feast. Our garden was planted especially for our upcoming feast last Spring. We determined there is red Cabbage, Greens, Squash, Corn, Potato, Carrots, Zucchini and Lime Balm. Upon returning inside we discussed what ways that these items could be used so we could ask the whole school to vote on what they preferred. This is a normal part of planning for a feast at our school. On Wednesday at lunch everyone voted for feast foods!

Wednesday afternoon, students completed their Apple Nutrition Assessment, which was a fill in the blanks supporting them to recall and learn more in depth about 3 vitamins and 3 minerals and their importance in the health of the human body. After the assessment we harvested Corn, Zucchini, Potatoes and Squash from our garden. Afterward, we enjoyed a drum circle, a few somatic exercises, then a delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookie from our Monday adventures.

If you are free this Saturday, we will have a table at the Brydges Street Community Sale in the parking lot at the school. 18 vendors are coming together to share their businesses and there will be quite a few young entrepreneurs in attendance. Food trucks and live music will also be onsite all day. This would be a great opportunity for any friends that are interested in Alternative Education to come learn more about joining our school community.