Post date: Feb 21, 2015 7:6:57 AM
Hello Everyone.
A week ago today our week off began with Valentines Day festivities, and the days since then have been excellent! I've learned enough SketchUp to create a floor-plan of our house and its proposed deck/patio, celebrated Abbi's 16th birthday, taken trips to the coast including an overnight to Monterey, and cleaned up the layers of leaves & debris that the two storms brought. I do love vacations and I hope that the time that your kids spent at home was valuable and fun as well -- there are about 120 days until summer vacation starts, by the way!
Thanks:
First off, the kids and I would like to thank Maureen for her amazing pumpkin bread for our Age of Sail trip and peanut blossom cookies an to Christine for the Valentines Day cupcakes! The adults who support me and our class with their time, efforts, and talents are one of the blessings of this school. The parents that drive on and chaperone trips, do work in class, help organize trips and lessons, and raise amazing kids are what make our DCS experience so incredible and rare. I also have the deepest appreciation for the administrative & office team and the dynamic 8th grade teachers that I get to work with! Nothing like a week off to give me time to reflect on the various reasons that I love my job!
Recap:
The Age of Sail trip was a memorable highlight from last week. In addition to the great weather and cool ship, the kids also got to experience a bit of maritime culture and military-style performance expectations. I was very impressed at how well they handled the challenges and applaud the mates and crews. Here are the ship's night-watch log entries (without author's permission to reprint) which speak quite well about the various experiences and impressions that the kids had.
Coming Up:
Our first week back from vacation will be the last week for this round of intensives. There have been a few times when I've asked the kids about some science-y things involving chemistry and, from what I can tell, they seem to have developed a good grasp of it! I appreciate how well Mr. Dowling incorporated experiments and simulations to make the science tangible and understandable. Our next science endeavor will be the visit to the Exploratorium on Thursday (2/26) and the Science Expo during the first week of April.
In social studies I get to do the "Constitution & Government" intensive for our class for about 6 weeks. As I've taught that intensive to the other two classes during this year, I have been able to make changes (big and small), so that our class gets updated version 3.0!
In English during the upcoming weeks, the kids will be doing projects about their authors as well as the book that they chose to read. Oh, and author Doug Wilhelm will be here on March 3rd to do some writing activities with our class and answer questions -- thanks Marina for setting that up!
That is all I can think of for now; as usual I exceeded the two-item premise of my misleading "coupla things" title.
Chris
Calendar:
February 26: Exploratorium
March 5 & 6: Diversity Conference
March 6: Laps for Learning
March 10: Spring Portraits
March 13: No school for kids
April 1-3: Science Fair
April 6-10: Conferences
April 14-18: Spring break
April 28: Levi Stadium Tour
May 9: Spring Auction
May 15: No school for kids
May 29: Middle school dance
June 3 to 5: Rafting the South Fork American River
June 12: Field Day
June 18: Last day of school
June 19: Staff work day