To quote a famous Disney movie.....“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and—snap!—the job’s a game!” 

Same rules apply! The first student to report what movie this line came from will receive a small amount of extra credit in the coming weeks.

The winter wind is starting to turn colder, so now is a
good time to eyeball one last shot of the beauty that 
fall brought to the WH campus a few weeks ago. 

Students were able to roam the campus for as many different leaves as they could find. They then returned, and using the App "Leaf Snap" were able to identify 13 different types of trees on the Wardlaw-Hartridge campus, including the Red Maple, Siberian Elm, and European Hornbeam (just to name a few). They then turned their creativity lose in creating orginal art pieces with them.

Oh, how we all wish it could stay that nice outside forever. 

Students were also put through their first fitness test of the season and ended up measuring their physical stamina by none other than Mrs. Nolan, who decided to come along for the ride! Without getting into specifics, lets just say that she gave EVERYONE a run for their money. Who said teachers don't have speed?!?!

Meanwhile, I stood and took pictures. 

A very special shout out goes to the middle school girls cross country team, who took 3rd place out of 15 teams in the GMC end of the year race. Our very own Bronwyn Russell was the first female overall out of almost 200 fifth through eighth grade female runners! Here's a picture of our 5th grade runners receiving their team trophy from Athletic Director Miran.

Last but not least, our students had a blast showing off their stuff in our Halloween parade.

 A special thanks to our Senior Buddies, who appeared at our  party like phantoms, took most of our food and candy....then vanished without a trace. Just kidding! They went above and beyond and stayed with us to the very end. It made everyone's day and we consider ourselves lucky to have such a supportive group of role models. 

.

'til next time.....

Button up everyone! The cold air is on it's way!

Goodbye October......

And the good times just keep on comin'......Another month down!

So much time, and so little to see......wait a minute. Strike that! Reverse it. (Three extra credit points to the first student who reports back to me as to what movie that is from.  It will prove you read my blog!)

Our fifth graders have been hard at work- especially in our butterfly garden. Out go last year's weeds. In go our mums and, in following with the Wizard of Oz theme, our very own Wizard of Wardlaw.

 A special thanks to our little Kindergarten helpers for doing all the heavy lifting!

************************

Spirit week was capped off with a tremendous morning of Green vs. Gold games for the Lower School. A special thanks to Mr. Nicholls, who did an amazing job. He even got our staff members to dance! Below, you can see our 5th graders, the old souls of the Lower School, playing the role of referees for our lower grades. 

***************

In the classroom, we have continued our focus on STEM exploration. Students collaborated with their Little Bits sets to build and invent various circut based projects.

Within the first 10 minutes students had created flashlights, trick hand buzzers, and in David's case, an attempted try at hypnosis on his teacher. "You are getting very sleepy. Very. very sleeeeeepy. No hoooooomework."

There is no limit to these Little Bits sets. With over 100,000 possible circuts to build, I don't think we'll ever run out of options. And besides, like the box says.......

'Til next time........

Owl Pellets Galore!

Hello again! Is is October already? Wow, time flies when you're having fun.

This week, students did a masterful job during our owl pellet dissection lab.

Thankfully, Mr. Cary Less stayed home this time! Recently, students have been studying food webs/chains, energy flows,  energy pyramids, and how the owl sits atop his perch of the food chain.

Our dissection allowed us to explore, identify, and analyze graphically the diet of the barn owl. This lab really gave us insight into the owl's dietary habits, as well as its behavioral and structural adaptations. The students did a wonderful job!

A few days later, we visited The Raptor Trust, where we were all able to explore the owl in a more extensive way. We even had a surprise visitor: Velma, a thirteen year old barren owl who was rescued as a one year old and has lived there under the Raptor Trust staff's loving staff care ever since! Velma was a gracious host, and was kind enough not to spit up any owl pellets in front of our class---unlike last year!!!

We are in full swing, as we are all looking forward to the upcoming fall fair all the joys that the cool fall air brings!

'Til next time.....

Welcome back Class of 2023!

You can check in here all year with periodic updates, announcements, and snapshots of some of the things we are doing in class. 

Yesterday was our first trip into the world of engineering. Students were given just twelve straws, eighteen inches of masking tape, and were to create a container that would catch and contain a golf ball dropped from ten feet! I was so impressed by their creative thinking and ability to brainstorm---multiple groups ripped the tape down the middle long ways to double the length, one group used the ground as it's main anchored framework, and another had the idea to weigh down their dangling tape with pencils so as to not have the wind crumple it into a fine mess. It was the first of many chances this year for your children to let their imaginations run wild in the name of math and science and I must say, I was really impressed.

We've also discussed the core ingredients to being a successful science investigator, learned the core lab safety rules, and today had a surprise visitor, my close friend Mr. Cary Less, who gave us a great demonstration on how NOT to perform a lab investigation.

 In Math, we've explored multiple ways to problem solve(put on display during our station quiz today).

 Emails are up and running for students, who have also already successfully navigated Haiku homepages and submitted both math and science assignments through google docs at a near perfect rate on the very first try. They will also later this week submit a response to a "discussion" for the first time this year.

In the near future, we will exploring the scientific method in science and will studying all things graphs and data displays in math class. We will then travel into our Ecosystems/Biomes unit in Science and our Number Sense unit in math.

 We really off to a flying start and I can't wait to move forward!

Two huge thumbs up everyone!