Hello Abintra community! We are excited to bring you updates from the Upper Elementary classroom, directly from us - the students! We have been enjoying fun activities this month! Our classroom recently received a life size human body that you can take apart and put back together. You can make the body female or male. This model helps us see how the parts fit inside your body and how everything comes together. You can often find students researching projects together. Some topics we're researching are the human body, ancient civilizations, Tennessee history, the Middle Ages, and animals across the globe. In art, Nashville potter Caroline Cercone has been working with us on making clay vases and pitchers. We also have the opportunity to work with clay freely. Rebekah Allen, award-winning playwright based in New York and sister of Office Manager Emily, visited our classroom to lead a workshop on building and developing characters for stories. T...

“With every clay project we are reminded of how clay connects us deeply to this planet."   -  Caroline Cercone, artist Abintra students have the pleasure of frequently working with clay. Clay, like water and sand, has a natural appeal and children enjoy working with these basic mediums because there is no separation between them and their work.   As soon as children are given clay, they immediately become aware that they are in charge and have influence over the material as it is quick to respond to their fingers.   With further experience, they soon begin to learn the subtle ways to manipulate clay to create what they want.   The forgiving quality of clay, and therefore the ability to readily fix mistakes, gives the child a sense of control over their project’s success which improves self esteem and self expression as they realize that mistakes aren’t going to halt their progress. Our young clay artists a...

In each class, students are working with activities that reflect each other’s personalities. We have more in common than we know!  It takes pasos , steps, but in the end, it works. The first step is to be kind to each other. Lower Elementary Students write down words that they remember. They use those words in pictures to make sentences. They also use the words as a model and write sentences. Students use words that describe personalities of animals and write complete stories. After I read a sentence in Spanish, students draw what they understand. Students read, summarize, and answer questions about what they have read. Upper Elementary Learning another language can be fun! We play games like Loteria , and take trips to the Global Education Center to practice African Peruvian dances. The instruction was all in Spanish! Students are artistas ! They created a beautiful display using sticks and yarn. S...