Upper Elementary News - February 9 - by UE Student Hazel and UE Guide Jonell

It’s almost spring!

These past few weeks, the UE students have been working on this year’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. The costume crew has been working on fitting people with costumes. Our actors are working very hard on memorizing their lines. We are really excited to share it with you on Thursday, 2/15/18, at 9:30am!

Lately, the people who go to the farm regularly have done farming activities on campus. This week, we made soil blocks and planted seeds in the greenhouse. We also helped to order more seeds for this spring and wrote letters to a seed company asking for a seed donation. Next week we will be planting mushrooms. Farming will resume to a full day schedule out at Emerson Farm after the play. We are very excited to finish building the barn and build a slide from the top of the barn to the bottom. Parents are invited to schedule a time to work at the farm. Contact Jonell if you are interested in working with us, or would like a tour.

The school bus has been retired. Hazel and Sherry have been working on getting two new vans, and our order has been placed. Our dream is that our retired school bus will be turned into a food delivery truck to provide fresh produce from our farm to communities that need fresh produce. We have plans to build it out for this use. Ben has drawn the interior plans.

Winter is gone, but Goodbye to Winter Fest is almost here! Come to Winter Fest at Emerson Farm on Sunday, 3/18 from 2 - 4. 

We have been changing around the lunch schedule so that we can find one that we like and that works for all of us. Several weeks ago, two independent students decided that our lunch schedule was not working and made a change. They decided that it would be better to have two groups at lunch. We tried this schedule for a week: group one ate at 11:45, and group two started at 12:15. Then both groups will had recess until 1:30. We decided that this schedule didn’t work out for several reasons. Now we can eat lunch any time between 11:30 and 12:15. We can eat on the floor picnic style or on a table. We have recess until 1:15, and when we come inside, a community service team does the after-lunch clean-up while everyone else has silent reading. A lot of the people think that this lunch schedule works well.

For the past several weeks, science lessons have centered around physics. Students have worked with the pendulum, car and ramp, magnetic strength, friction, and electric circuits, and have collected data along the way.

We will return to TPAC for a performance of Air Play on March 6 and 7. We will inform parents of the schedule and transportation plans for each child closer to the time of the performance.

Courtesy of the TPAC website

From the TPAC website, here is a description of Air Play:

"Ride the wind and reach for the skies with a modern spectacle that brings to life the very air we breathe! Created in collaboration with an air sculptor, the nonverbal performance is the result of superbly practiced storytelling and stagecraft as the characters turn ordinary items into objects of uncommon beauty. Umbrellas, over-sized kites, and fabrics dance in currents of air. Confetti turns into the night sky. Balloons have a mind of their own. The normal rules of science, including gravity, are seemingly held at bay as the performers step into a circle of fans and use the updraft to create an astonishing aerial spectacle."

- Written by UE student Hazel, and UE guide Jonell