MC Exhibition Night

Tonight was Katelyn's turn to shine.  Anser had its Middle Childhood Exhibition Night.  For those I haven't told, the girl's school is a Charter School and it has a different classroom structure than traditional schools.  Anser groups the kids together in stages of learning, so there is a Kindergarten class, but after that they have Early Childhood classes (1st and 2nd grade); Middle Childhood (3rd and 4th grade) and Upper Childhood (5th and 6th grade).  This gives the kids in the classroom (they call the whole group a crew) an opportunity to be both a student and a teacher.  The older kids get to help teach the younger kids and in doing so, reinforce several of the concepts they have already learned.  So the kids stay with the same teacher (crew leader) for two years.  And like Alyssa's kindergarten class, the MC class had an expedition - theirs focused on the Boise River.  Since their expedition was the Boise River, most of their reading, writing, science, history, social studies and art projects focused on the river.

The kids performed four songs, one was "Someone's Gonna Use It" by Tom Chapin, two original pieces written by an Anser parent and a teacher - Water Droplet and Be Outside - and the last was This Land is Our Land.  In between songs, each class presented information to the audience.  One class did a skit about the water cycle.  Katelyn's class read a Boise River book in both English and Spanish with a power point going of the art.  Katelyn was in the Spanish speaking group.  And the other class presented a slide show on the Boise River's history and how it helped develop the Boise Area.

After that we got to play Tic Tac Toe with different stations the MC classes had set up (for every station we visited we got to check a box).  The pictures below are from the various Tic Tac Toe stations.

Katelyn is showing off her Andy Goldsworthy type art, using nature from in and around the Boise River to make art (she did two - the one right above her hand, which is her name in river rocks (Kate - which is what she goes by at school) and the picture on the very top, a flower made of leaves and rocks).

Another Tic Tac Toe square was the playing with mud station.  Katelyn's class explored the effects of water on land and soil.  They studied the water cycle, erosion, the different parts of a river, and a bunch of other stuff.

They also wrote poems about the River (another Tic Tac Toe square)

 Katelyn's poem says:

Bright light shining on the yellow sand,

deer tracks in the sandy bank,

leaves flowing in the air,

the bright, sparkling water flowing through the rocks,

the wading ducks watching me,

the swift, cold running water brushing my legs.

And Katelyn's class wrote research papers on river animals.  Katelyn was assigned the Bullfrog.  She researched the bullfrog, wrote facts about the bullfrog, drew a scientific drawing of a bullfrog and then the school bound all the kids projects into a book, which we got to take home after successfully completing our game of Tic Tac Toe.

Overall it was a great night and if Mike gets some of the videos taken off the camera, I'll try to post the original Anser songs - they were really good and entertaining.

On a totally unrelated note, Katelyn had an orthodontist appointment today and he said her teeth are just about as perfect as you can get at this age.  I was worried because her front two teeth are spaced apart alot and they are coming in at slightly different angles.  But the orthodontist said that space is good - she still has 12 more adult teeth to fit in her mouth over the next few years and there is a good possibility they will take up most of the room.  Her jaw and her bite are great.  So while he will continue to check on her, he said that if she ends up needing braces, he thinks it would be a pretty mild correction.