Our wagon trains rolled out of Ft. Independence this week, and our pioneers have already had some unfortunate events. You might ask your child about that, if you didn’t hear already.

We started our spelling program, practicng words that are likely to be written often in our trail journals: biscuit, Cheyenne, desert (instead of dessert), and the like.

But a major highlight of the week was our trip to the Mercer Museum. Our thanks go to the mothers of Jonah, Trevi, and Jacob for driving and leading small groups on their explorations. We took our wagon-packing lists and found an amazing number of things that people would have had in that time, not all of which might have fit into the wagon.  As it happened, there was also a new, unrelated exhibit about the ancient Mayans and the work of archaeologists, which we also had time to see.

 

Here are some comments from our group about what they saw, thought, and learned . . .

(Jonah) I saw a lot of cool things. I learned that it took a lot of time to make clothing. I wondered how they got everything up on the ceiling.

(Trevi) I loved learning about specifically the wagon’s outside. I saw so much dust you could take a handful of it. But it was so interesting because they said they had all the original pieces. They also said that they haven’t cleaned since Henry Mercer put them there. The Mayan exhibit was so cool. They had all sorts of puzzles, caves, maps, and you could even get bitten by a spider.

Chloe) I thought the Mercer Museum was really cool. I especially liked how they would hang things on the ceiling. I also thought the Mayan exhibit was really cool because I liked how the exhibit  let you touch things. In the actual exhibit I liked the dog footprints.

(Caden) At the Mercer Museum, I really liked the Mayan exhibit. One of the things I learned was that the Mayans had three calenders. They believed that if they all ended on the same day, the world would end. That is why they added a few extra days to one of the calendars.  My favorite activity in the exhibit was there were symbols and you had to figure out which ones  would light up. If you pressed on one that didn’t light up, you would have to start over again. If you got all of them right, the treasure  would light up. In the actual exhibit, I liked the stairs that the dog stepped on when the cement was still wet. I thought it was cool to see the footprints in the cement.

(Hannah)  I enjoyed the trip to the Mercer Museum a lot. They had a side exhibit about the Mayans.  My favorite part there were the spiders.  Over a little cave opening in the wall it said, danger, there may be vicious spiders.  We dared one of the people in our group to stick their hand in.  She said it wasn’t scary at all.  I stuck my hand in next.  Instead of a spider bite, it was just air blasting on my hand.  Everyone else tried it but Adelaide.  Finally she mustered all her courage and stuck her hand in.  She had to agree, it wasn’t scary at all.  Why did they use air to represent the spider bite?

(Kai) The trip to the museum was very fun. The Mayan exhibit was very cool. I really like it because it was fun trying to match up different symbols to light this window up to show you some Mayan Necklaces. And it was fun putting your hand in the spider bite thing. It scared everyone but it was only air blowing on your hand.

(Luca) I wonder why they don’t clean the artifacts in the museum. They let it sit and rot,collect dust and get moldy. I think they should clean the historic pieces of junk!

(Clara) I really liked the Mercer Museum. The one thing I really enjoyed is that there were activities and you did not have to just read stuff, but there were  activities  that you would do, but you would also learn stuff. The one activity that I really liked is that you would put your hand in a little slot and it would squirt out air and it would try to be like a spider was biting you. I liked how there were tools, kitchen utensils, and much other stuff hanging from the ceiling, and there were 7 floors in the museum so you would see all those things from different perspective .  I also loved the Mayan exhibit.It was really interesting.  It had different tents and there would be different things to learn about. Overall, I think it was amazing to see everything. I learned a lot.

(Juniper) Something interesting that I learned was that they made combs out of turtle shell and horns. I knew that they made things out of horns and turtle shells, but never combs. Also, the combs there were really cool, and it was interesting to imagine how much work they put into it.

(Izzy) At the Mercer Museum, I learned that the Mayans used a lot of the same constellations, like Orion and  the giant scorpion. I also learned that at the yard sale he bought most of the merchandise from, everything was one cent.

(Sofia) I was really surprised about those tortoise shell combs. They had so many designs, and little  designs, I didn’t know such thing was possible. The wagon was also amazing! I can’t believe that it can hold 1,500 BWU!  They also had a side exhibit about the Mayan Medallion. I thought the setting was nice, and the shaky bridge was really realistic.

(Adelaide) The trip to the Mercer Museum was very interesting and fun. They had an exhibit about the Mayans beside the main collection. One of my favorite parts of the Mayan exhibit was the spider bite. There was a little opening that you were supposed to put your hand in, and it was supposed to feel like a spider bit you. At first I was so scared to do it. Then after most of my friends did it, I worked up the courage and stuck my hand in. All it felt like was air! I guess it was supposed to be kind of like a shot. It is so quick that you don’t even feel anything.

(Damien) I thought that the Mercer Museum and the Mayan exhibit were really cool. The spider in the Mayan museum was really cool, and I liked that it was so interactive. I learned that a fiddle was violin because I always that that a fiddle was a recorder, and I also learned that wagons are a lot smaller than you think. It was cool that they put dog prints around the museum. I wonder about the weird pottery stuff at floor six. Another thing I learned about the Mayan exhibit is how to tell the difference between a male skeleton and a female.

(Gabe) In the Mayan exhibit I learned how to count in the Mayan language.  They use lines and dots:

       |   (line) = 5            • (dot)=1                | | •   (line line dot) =11         | •••  (line dot dot dot)=8

(Annika) I thought that the Mercer Museum was very interesting because there were so many different things there that I had never seen before. I especially liked the Mayan exhibit because there were lots of cool things about how the Mayans lived and what kinds of creatures that they lived with. They had a dead tarantula! Another thing that I liked was the clocks. I thought that was interesting because the clocks were so big and complicated.

(Jacob) I thought that the trip to the Mercer Museum was very interesting. I liked how the objects were all over the place. I also liked how the Mayan exhibit was very interactive and fun. It was cool that the dog walked up the stairs and left paw prints in the wet cement. I learned that they used a corn sheller to get the corn off the cob, and I never knew how they did it. I also learned how to tell the difference between the skeleton of a man and a woman. All and all, it was a cool trip.

 

On being “cool” — We began the week with a discussion of what it might mean to describe yourself or others as cool or not cool. Everyone recognized it as a value judgment. We talked a bit about peer pressure, wandered into a discussion of  social networking sites and what can happen when the posts target “uncool” individuals. We reiterated the importance of getting an adult to help if things on such sites turn ugly, as they have sometimes done even among our wonderful Miquon kids — none of whom are actually old enough to be members of such places. One of our young philosophers suggested that, in order for “cool” people to exist, there must necessarily be “uncool” people. “It’s like being special,” he explained. “If everybody is special, then no one is.” Another student questioned that, suggesting that the way someone is special could be unique. We suggested that the same might apply to cool. Still, when a child announces loudly, “This is the cool lunch table!” we know that something is also being implied about the people who weren’t included in that group. It’s something we’re going to be sensitive to and discuss all year.

Our first lunch sale went perfectly and was a fabulous way to end the week. Not a single classroom got an incorrectly packed tub of food. This means that pairs of students were extremely attentive to recording orders accurately and adding the total number of each item correctly. Mark and I don’t double-check their work. The full responsibility is theirs, and they came through without a flaw. Inevitably, mistakes will happen, and students will help resolve the problems. But it was a confidence-building start.

We have been building gliders for a week now. Students are learning about measuring, symmetry, the decimal nature of the metric system, the value of perseverance, the need to discard a favorite design idea and start again, and much more.

 

Students are now recording distances (in meters and centimeters, using a decimal point) and calculating average distances for sets of 5 flights.  Short division (which we’ve been teaching and/or reviewing) comes in handy here, as do calculators. We’ll soon be looking for the median and mode distances not only for individuals’ efforts but also for the group altogether. We’ve been delighted to hear students celebrate their personal bests, even when they don’t come close to someone else’s distance.

 

On Wednesday, we had our first whole-building sing. If you happen to be at school and can hang around between 8:30 and 9, please come up and join us. We’re going to be doing a lot folk songs, especially ones that might have some connection with things that will be part of either group’s focus in social studies this year.  Composed songs, too, will be part of our growing repertoire. We have a bunch of enthusiastic singers in both classrooms.

We began reading novels about the westward journey this week. Students were offered several titles, mostly from the “Dear America” series which use a diary format. They are reading individually and at their own pace. Sometimes reading is assigned as part of homework, sometimes done during class time, and always an option whether assigned or not. Each child is keeping notes and a record of pages read as a Google document. You might ask your child to share that document with you and talk a bit about the evolving story.

And the wagons are packed and ready to roll out of Fort Independence on Monday.  There were a few struggles with the spreadsheet that helped students avoid overloading their wagons, but most used it without difficulty. A lot of vocabulary questions came into our days as students puzzled over such mysteries as bedpans, cooking utensils,  hatchets vs. axes, candlesticks vs. candles, heirlooms, a match bottle, and chaps. Our many illustrated books and the internet helped, but our trip to the Mercer Museum on Tuesday (Sept. 24) should make students’ understanding of these things much more vivid. We’ll be doing a scavenger hunt for the things on the packing list. We did some background work with primary sources: an online posting of an actual emigrants’ guide from 1849, a newspaper article from 1851 about the cost of living in Philadelphia as it related to a carpenters’ strike for more pay, and a collection of recommended remedies for such things as toothache and babies’ teething pain.  Students have written their first diary entry and will be working on biographical posters next week, using some of that information.

As always, these are just parts of the past week. Parents are always welcome to visit in the classroom and get a deeper understanding of what we do and how we do it.

 

Our first day of school went well — the group spent time organizing their binders and cubbies, looking through their new student planners, having a whole-group PE time to run off some of that still-summertime energy, and made some decisions about how we would do various rotating classroom jobs this year. One of the more interesting parts of that discussion was their desire for specific roles instead having the option to negotiate with each other around who does what for jobs that are shared by two or three people. They decided that clarity was going to save a lot of arguing, and changes could be made if they wanted within their individual teams.

Tuesday and Wednesday were the days of our camping trip. After having our regular music class and doing some activities in the home classroom, we were off to the woods. Although it was hot and humid the entire time, everyone seemed to enjoy the adventure — lots of swimming, rock-hopping in the stream, and roaming through acres and acres of boulder-filled forest. This is a group of wonderful singers, and we were delighted to have students share some songs from camp as we sang around the campfire after dinner. There will soon be some quotes from the writing they all did afterward under “Student Work” on our classroom website. Mark is working on getting photos of the trip up onto the gallery there.

We began our simulation of the westward journey in covered wagons at the end of the week. Three teams of six (created by the teachers) spent some time coloring and getting questions answered about the trail map that will guide them. We started by imagining their own families moving to Australia: how they would get there, how their possessions would travel, what they would need to do to actually make the move. Then we speculated about what would be different about going to Oregon by covered wagon 150 years or so in the past.

Students were given a list of 9 families that make up their imaginary train. They each chose a family and then an identity within that family. This is the persona through which they will keep a diary and participate in decisions during the journey. The next project will be to research and create a biographical poster for that identity. This will be an extended project in class and at home in the coming week.

As a math-related tangent, we looked at two American flags from our collection — a copy of one from 1861 when there were 34 states and one current one with 50 states. Students were asked to look carefully at the arrangements of the stars on the flag and analyze how they were laid out. Most spent a fairly short time at this. When we began to ask questions, it turned out that they hadn’t looked very closely. So they went back again. This time their observations were more complete, but after a couple of students said confidently that there were 38 stars on the older flag, no one with the correct number had the courage to offer their own count. We talked about that situation for a bit and why it might be a good idea to stand up for your own viewpoint.  Students were then asked to come up with their own design for the 26-star flag that would have been needed in 1844, when they are taking their trip to Oregon. There were a lot of interesting ideas generated on paper that showed a sense of symmetry and desire for a coherent layout. When they saw the actual flag from the time with four rows of 7, 6, 6, and 7 stars, many kids thought it was boring and uninspired.

We had some new vocabulary to explore. Vexillology is the study of flags, and we found that word only in one of our unabridged dictionaries.  One student recalled that what we are doing is a simulation, and we added similar, simile, facsimile and its shortened form fax, and simulate to that word’s family. We discussed emigrant and immigrant. Some students knew the second word, but most were surprised to realize that, if a person was one of those things, s/he also had to be the other — it’s just a matter of perspective.

There was a lot more during the week — too much to describe fully here. We read an article in Junior Scholastic about the problems of manufacturing clothing abroad for the US market and discovered that only 2 students were wearing a shirt that had been made in America. We did a math computation survey, enjoyed an assembly of Friday in which many of our group led the whole school in one of the summer camp songs they sang on Tuesday night, engaged with some math and logic puzzles, and began a short chapter book called Hugh Pine — a fable with a provocative underlying message. We ended the week on a high point — everyone came in on Friday with their student planner signed by parent!