The Rookery

As part of our river theme, students made topographical maps by creating land masses out of play dough in a plastic bin.  They then add water one centimeter at a time, each time tracing the "shoreline" on the land mass by using a transparency across the top of the bin.…

I love getting out of the building early in the year and having a time for us to just be the Herons together.  Going to River Bend Nature Center for our annual campout gave us a chance to learn a lot about rivers and a lot about each other.  I…

Today our Blue Books (finally) arrived and the students were able to number their pages and organize their books.  It's a big day.  One of my favorite parts is hearing the advice the 5th graders have for their 4th grade peers:  "don't write too big…I ran out of room."  "If…

Sometimes folks ask how we can teach math when we have two different grades in the classroom.  They assume that I would have to teach one fourth grade lesson and then a fifth grade lesson.  "How can you find time to do math and everything else?" The answer is we design…

This weekend during a very wobbly two-wheeled bike outing, my daughter Hazel was often right on the verge of giving up.  Then she would steel herself, stare at her handlebars and say to herself, "I've got this." It seems an apt mantra for the Herons.  Fourth and fifth grade is…

This summer we found a tiny monarch caterpillar on some milkweed by my folks’ house in Indiana.  It was maybe a centimeter long and, at first, it seemed like it wasn’t eating anything.  Then we noticed a tiny trail of holes in the leaf.  Soon the trail and the caterpillar…

I walked by our butterfly garden today after the Village work time and saw that it had been almost all weeded (a mammoth job.)  It had been done quietly and without fanfare simply because it needed to be done.  That's the spirit of volunteerism that pervades Prairie Creek.  When folks…

Yesterday E.C. sprang up to me and said without taking a breath, "I just found a great quote in my book.  It's so funny.  I think we should have a poster where we put great quotes.  I'm going to make it, O.K?  Where should I put it?  I'm gong to…

M.M. with her giant Fibunaci spiral – not related to Village but very cool all the same. We are about to embark on Village – something which you'll be hearing a lot more about.  But before we dove in in earnest, Gabe, Cathy and I wanted to make sure that…

It was nice to see many of you at May Day.  I find myself wearing two hats – my teacher hat and my parent hat – at many of these recent 5th grade events.  It can be a bittersweet time for our fifth graders as they prepare to move on…