Calendar Highlights
Thursday and Friday, May 10-11 Spring Musical SPAMALOT
The Otter Class is not in this show, but if you’re curious about the amazing things our middle school students do, this is a good way to find out (while having a fun evening with other Quest families). Click here for more information or here for tickets.
Tuesday, May 15 8:30 – 9:30 am Volunteer Appreciation Coffee
Thank you volunteers!!
Friday, May 18, 3:30 – 5:15ish Otter Class Movie and Pizza Party
Friday, May 25, 12:00 noon dismissal Last Day of School (NO AFTER CARE)
Thanks for your inquiries about plans for the last day of school. They are in the works. Details forthcoming.
Curriculum Update
For the past couple of weeks, we have been dipping our feet into two closely related topics. As spring has finally seemed to arrive, we have been studying botany and entomology.
Entomology
Last winter, for the holidays, Mrs Linstromberg gifted to our class an ant farm (thank you, Mrs. Linstromberg!). The insect company needed to wait until the weather was warm enough to ship ants to us, and we received them 12 days ago. We put them into their habitat and have been observing and sketching their progress almost daily. Check out our wall of observations next to the climber!
By coincidence, one of our students taught us about caterpillars and butterflies as a My Special Day presentation (more about Special Day presentations below), and brought in living caterpillars for us to observe! We have several daily sketches of these amazing creatures transforming — we’ll find a gallery space for those at the beginning of next week.
Botany/Gardens
So far, students have:
- brainstormed a list of plants to plant in the garden (divergent thinking)
- visited West Campus and sketched the gardens, looking to see if they are ready for planting (observational sketching)
- created a collage garden plan using cut-outs from Johnny’s Seed Catalog, and writing as many plant names (fine motor skills and authentically meaningful writing)
- planted several types of seeds from their plan indoors, including watermelon, cantaloupe, corn, carrots, peas, and pumpkin. So many more to come! (authentic work)
- sketched the progress of those seeds (no signs of germination yet…patience, patience…)
- sketched seeds and learned about the internal parts of seeds (seed coat, cotyledon, embryo)
In the week ahead, students will:
- continue indoor planting
- continue tracking the changes in our ant farm, butterfly habitat and botany lab through observational sketching
- create at least one experiment
- sketch flowers with their internal parts
- dissect seeds and sketch the internal parts
- dissect flowers and laid out the parts, and learn the names and functions of sepals, petals, anthers, stamens, and ovaries
Whoa, that’s a lot…maybe we won’t get to all of that! Especially because we also have StarLab — our in-school planetarium show — this week!
Next post…My Special Day update…!