Get it? FALLing into the New Year? Because this blog post will be recapping fall even though it's the new year?
I amaze me.
Hello and welcome to 2016, everyone! I hope everyone had a spectacular holiday season, and the beginning of this new year has treated you well so far. The tailend of 2015 was a crazy busy time for us at FMLCS, with field trips and performances and projects. The insanity peaked at Christmas, when we had performances three days straight. Thankfully, January and February are a calmer months, and there will be more time for bi-weekly blog updates! Since there hasn't been an update in a while, there's a whole lot to share, so let's get started
First, at the end of October, we took a field trip to the Wildlife Park in Gray. At the beginning of the year we were studying animal classification in science, so we took our newfound knowledge and put it to the test in the real world.
Throughout the day the students were asked to classify the animals we were seeing, and they each completed a scavenger hunt looking for animals from the five categories of vertebrates.
We had a lot of fun on this field trip, and it was the second time in a row this year that there's been an abundance of parents along for the ride! It was a fun experience for everyone, spending time together in the great (if mostly controlled) outdoors.
I think one of the most prominent highlights of the trip for me was feeding the fish in the fish hatchery. It's always been my favorite part of the wildlife park, and getting to share that experience with my explorers was very cool. They loved throwing food over the side and watching the fish swarm up to the surface. It also showed how enterprising some of the explorers can be, as they searched and found food other people had dropped.
The blog has always used GIFs because my phone makes them automatically when I take multiple pictures of something - which I do because my hands are shaky - and I think they're too cool not to do something with. The GIFs below came into being because it took roughly twelve thousand tries before we got everyone looking forward and smiling. We got it in the end, though, and with very few casualties!
Now, there's been plenty of time for the normal, routine stuff.
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| 'Normal' and 'routine' being relative terms, in some cases. |
We've been very hard at work over the past few months, reading books...
learning new math tricks and getting help from friends...
cooking delicious things...
taking human body models apart, examining them, and putting them back together again...
and demanding adorable group photos from frazzled teachers.
But we've also found time for our annual Harvest Party, complete with 'corn' maze designed by my way awesome mother and put together by Oklahoma R's equally as way awesome mother. I wish I had photos of her building this thing, because it nearly killed me when I tried, and she swept in like an engineering guardian angel come to save the day. Thanks, Susie!
We built new playground equipment with the help from the Little Treasures Childcare director and staff (and spouses), as well as some fantastic FMLCS families (we're lookin' at you, parents of Pennsylvania R, Arizona V, Colorado A, and California J!).
We had our first class store, using money the students earned via our points based behavioral system. It's always interesting to watch the progression of purchases throughout the school year as they learn to save their money for things they really want, to calculate the cost and figure out whether they have enough themselves before bringing things up to the register, and to have their money ready for me once it's their turn to 'check out'.
We had Spirit Week, which consisted of Crazy Hair Day...
Favorite Book Character Day...
Pajama Day...
Dress Up Day...
And Backwards Day. Let me tell you a little something about Backwards Day. It's was the first and the last. Never has there been more weeping over clothes. Catastrophe.
We packed Thanksgiving boxes for families in the area who needed a little help during the holiday season.
We had a visit from Oklahoma R.'s dad, who showed us the merits of washing our hands thoroughly with the help of nifty plush germ toys, special hand crème, and black light.
We decorated and sold wreathes as a fundraiser, leading to an infestation of glitter and pine needles that haunted the school for many days after.
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| Many, many days after. |
We had three performances the weekend before Christmas, starting with a nursing home visit on Friday, then a Christmas pageant at Saco Faith Chapel, then ending with our big musical on Sunday. The explorers and students from LTCC did a great job learning their songs, movements, and - in the case of Minnesota M. and Louisiana K. - learning their lines! It was a month of hard, hard work, but we pulled it off and had a great time!
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| Pictured: a future student! |
Finally, we arrive at the last day of school in 2015. We had a fantastic Christmas party with LTCC staff and students! The staff members organized and put together activities for the kids to do, including an Ornament Balance, Shaving Cream Toss, Candy Cane Fishing, Present Punching, Ice Cube Stacking, and Cookie Decorating! A big shoutout needs to go to the staff of Little Treasures Childcare, because they put a lot of hard work and effort in to make the party such a success!
After the games, the students went downstairs for pizza, a movie, and presents - which, much to the explorers' chagrin, was the last activity of the day.
2015 was a fantastic year for FMLCS. We got four awesome new students, increased our number to six awesome families, adopted four awesome new pets, and learned a million awesome new things. I can't wait to see what the rest of 2016 has in store for us!
Tune into the Facebook page later this week to see a Month - well, more like Fall-in-Review vlog, which will show you even more of what we did at the end of last year! I hope to be back here soon with another update in the next couple of weeks. Until then!
God bless,
Mia
