Farewell, November

Hello and happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you had a fantastic holiday and - for my students - a fantastic break. The past few weeks have been busy of the unphotogenic kind, mostly full of school work and meeting the 20,000 wordcount goal on our novels (which we did, by the way) and practicing for our Thanksgiving concert (which, for those of you weren't there, was super great), but we did manage to do a few cool things! For instance, we kickstarted our new science unit off with some fancy astronaut (i.e. freeze dried) ice cream.

 

 

Then we learned about matter in space, and what happens when two objects collide. They had a lot of fun making craters in the kinetic sand using metal balls, experimenting with distance and force.

 

We had our second annual Thanksgiving caroling trip at the Monarch Center, an assisted living facility within walking distance from our school. We perform things from our Thanksgiving concert, which gives the astronauts a great chance to practice in front of an audience while at the same time providing the opportunity to bring smiles to people who need them and be pictures of Jesus' love. The residents love when our astronauts come visit, and often sing along with us.

Unfortunately I didn't get any video of the kids performing, but I did get a few pictures of the warm-ups! A couple Monarch Center staff members came in and had an impromptu jam session - one of them even knew how to play ukulele!

 

 

The one who played ukulele told Megan what chords to play and what pattern to play in, and they did an entire song progression together. It was pretty cool!

After we went around to all the different rooms, the Monarch Center provided us with muffins and juice as a thank you.

 



The next week, we had our Thanksgiving concert! I'll be posting the recording tonight, but here are some pictures to tide you over (taken by Astronaut M.D.'s family - thanks guys!).

Also being posted tonight is our Month in Review video, so watch out for that as well. We're officially into the Christmas season, so we'll be decorating our tree this week and practicing for our upcoming Christmas pageant (11:00 a.m., December 20 at Saco Faith Chapel SDA). Come back on December 14 for our next blog post, and have a happy two weeks between!

 

God bless,

Mia

On Parties, Parades, and Pumpkin Bread

 

 Hello, everybody! Hope you had a great two weeks. We've gotten up to some pretty fun hijinks since our last blog post. We had our fall party scheduled for the last Friday in October, but then our hot water heater broke and started flooding and long story short, we had to take the day off. So! We had it the following Monday instead. The astronauts teamed up to put together some fall decorations to hang outside our classroom, we watched a Charlie Brown movie, and then...

 

 

 

We made stuffed animals with PAWS, a company that brings the Build-a-Bear experience to your front door. The astronauts had been looking forward to this for quite some time, so it was a huge relief that PAWS was willing to reschedule after our hot water heater tragedy! Thanks to Miss Athena at LTCC for putting the PAWS experience together and letting us participate!

Later on that week, when we weren't busy being hard at work and completely adorable...

 

See? Adorable.

...we were busy doing some good deeds!

Every year at around this time, the Saco Faith Chapel SDA Church passes out canvas bags throughout the neighborhood for people to fill with non-perishable food items such as canned vegetables and boxes of stuffing. The food we collect is put into boxes for families in need to take home on Thanksgiving.

We also got another visit from our friends Pastor Brenda and Danny (who was feeling a little shy that day). This last Friday, we got some sad news about Danny. He was attacked by a loose pit bull and very badly hurt. Although he'll be okay with time, we should all say a prayer for his speedy recovery.

 

 We decided to elongate our Thanksgiving break by having school on Veterans Day, and we used our day wisely - but learning about how Veterans Day came to be a holiday and going to a parade!

 

A couple days later, we got our first significant snowfall of the year. It only lasted a few hours, and the kids couldn't go play in it due to its being 100% mud underneath, but it was still pretty to look at!

 

We made some very belated pumpkin bread that everybody liked (even our pickiest astronaut - score!) and that didn't end up burning in our vicious, finicky oven like almost everything we try baking no matter how we adjust our times and temperatures.

But we're not mad. Nope.

 

Finally, we finished out our week by finishing out our first tissue box of the year. We all shed a tear at the implications of this tragic event. Okay, just kidding. I shed a tear and all the astronauts mocked me by insisting they were all sporting matching colds.

 

Even the tissue box was smug.

It's okay, though. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I have enough tissues and hand sanitizer to last through the winter. And like I said in my last blog post - winter is a comin'.

 

Hope you guys have a great couple of weeks! This is our last one before our Thanksgiving program and break, which is very exciting. Check back on November 30 for not only a blog post, and not only a blog post and a Month in Review, but a blog post and a Month in Review and a recording of our Thanksgiving program. 

 

The students and I hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

God bless,

Mia

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On Firetrucks, Farms, Greyhounds and More

Happy November, everyone! Three months into school. It's hard to process. I know, I know, I start almost every blog post like that. "Woah, time passed you guys. Crazy!" But it is crazy. Just yesterday all the leaves were green and still on the trees and fall was way off in the distance. Now we're over a third of the way through fall and winter doth approach on the not-so-far-off horizon (it is snowing right now even as I type this). You know Astronaut MD has grown over two inches since last year?

 

Crazy.

 

We ended October in a rush of activity. I did a blog post two weeks ago - you might have missed it, as I forgot to post about it on Facebook like the master of social media I am - and it was pretty tame, owing to the fact October started off at a crawl. The two weeks that followed were more like a sprint. First, we had a visit from the...

 

 

They come talk to the students of both LTCC and FMLCS once a year about fire safety, and let them climb about in the truck. The astronauts always look forward to it, particularly Astronaut JA (our firefighter in training). Five pictures down, you can see Astronaut JA telling the firemen about where the various things on their truck were located - and, much to his surprise, he was right!

 

 

The next day we went to Wolfe's Neck Farm in Freeport with the students of Pine Tree Academy. I worked there in 2012, so it was super fun to see everyone again! The astronauts were at first shocked into a stupor at all the kids running around, then warmed up as a nice lady enthusiastically told us about pumpkins and then let them pick pumpkins of their own.

 

However, during this field trip, a phenomena occurred. Although the Astronauts were having loads and loads of fun, whenever they weren't involved directly in something, they went into what I like to call 'resting grump face' mode.

 

You'd never know he'd just had a little 'I picked the perfect pumpkin' dance party seconds before.

 

Also just after picking his pumpkin.

 I had fun startling them out of their grump faces, and it's a shame the rest turned out so blurry, because they thought it was wildly entertaining how sad they looked in the middle of a pumpkin patch. Once you got their attention, they were all smiles.

 

Ta-da!

 

 

The day after that, we had a very special visitor to the classroom:  Pastor Brenda and her greyhound, Danny! Pastor Brenda (or, as the kids now like to call her, PB&J - for Pastor Brenda Johnson) taught the Astronauts all about greyhounds and what part they play in God's great big world. Danny's grandfather was the fastest dog in the world, so it was basically like having a celebrity in the classroom. We read a book about greyhounds, watched a video of Danny's grandfather running, and petted Danny at every chance we got. The Astronauts were in dog heaven!

 

Things slowed down a little after that, but only a little. We finished up our unit on ecosystems and our ecosystem model journals, which the kids had a lot of fun keeping track of. Our next unit is on Space & the Universe, and they've been waiting for that one all semester, so we should have double the fun!

We also finished up our unit on Vincent Van Gogh, who the kids loved learning about. I had excited reports from the parents of three different Astronauts talking about how their students came home and rattled off everything they knew about the famous painter - right down to Vincent's brother's name and, in at least once instance, what said brother did for a living. We're a classy bunch at FMLCS, let me tell you. Here are the kids working on their 'Starry Night' paintings, the finished projects of which I forgot to get pictures of (Master of Social Media, I'm telling you).

 

Finally, as the first quarter of school came to a close, we had our quarterly Classroom Bazaar. Our classroom management system is largely monetary, which means they get 'paid' for things like doing their chores (i.e. wiping down tables, feeding the pets, etc.), finishing all their workboxes/workpockets, and being on their 100% best behavior. At the end of every quarter, the Astronauts get to spend the "money" they've earned on items in a little store. There are cheap things, like stickers and erasers, and there are expensive things - like a play vet clinic and giant stuffed bear. The Astronauts have to decide whether to save their money for something big or spend all their money on little things. We saw some really great decision making, which was great! And some of the Astronauts chose to spend all or most of their money, which will be great down the road as we see how past decisions impact our future investments. The older Astronauts benefit the most from this, but because we use play money modeled after the real thing, it's also great for the younger Astronauts to memorize and practice using the various coins and dollars in our monetary system. The Astronauts loved the store, and I'm excited to see how they react to our next one in January!

 

I am very excited that it's November. We'll be studying Space & the Universe, learning about the artist Mary Cassatt, writing novels for the Young Writer's Program (a subset of National Novel Writing Month), passing out bags to collect Thankstiving food for those in need, putting on our Thanksgiving Program, and more! The holidays are upon us, my friends, and we at FMLCS cannot wait. Check out our October Month in Review video on our Facebook page (or just RIGHT HERE) for an even better look of what all we got up to this past month. We'll see you in two weeks for the next blog post (November 16), and for those of you who are experiencing the surprise winter weather, stay safe!

 

God bless,

Mia