Character Counts Reward

The class earned their 200 smiley faces today, which means that they did a wonderful job of keeping their six pillars each week for Character Counts. As a result, the students earned a class reward. The students once again were allowed to choose what they would like as a reward. The top choices included open gym, time to nap or lounge around, a kickball tournament, and a dance party. The class voted and the students decided that they wanted to have extra time playing games in the gym, again! We will be participating in our open gym in the coming weeks and will post pictures of our fun!

January Student Challenge

This month's student challenge involves creating illusions. During science, students learned about the reason that the sun and moon appear to be the same size. Even though the sun is much larger than the moon, it is so much further away from the earth, which makes it appear much smaller than it really is. Students were encouraged to use this concept to create their own illusions. Take a look at their creative photographs below!

MICHAEL

ADDIE

DAWSON

LUCY

MAKSYM

SOFIA

ZACH

JADYNN

ANNE

CATHRYN

ZACHARY

FILIP

Swinger's Adventures with Ben

Adventures with Swinger

When Swinger came home with me on Friday my friend JT came over. Swinger, JT, and I all had pizza. Swinger had like 5 pieces of pizza so we told him he had to be done. Then Swinger tried to steal my pizza. Then we went in my basement and played some mini hoops. Swinger beat me 20 to 18. Swinger got a game-winning basket. Swinger started rubbing it in my face that he beat me. Then Swinger and I played on my brother’s huge beanbag. First I did a flip onto the beanbag. Then Swinger said, “I can do better than that.” So then Swinger did a double front flip onto the beanbag. Swinger told me he was hungry so on the way to my brother’s game we got McDonald’s. Swinger got an extra large fry and a large shake. Swinger started telling people on my brother’s basketball team to shoot 3 pointers. Then he started telling people to dunk on my brother’s team. Then when we went to bed Swinger was kicking me crazy. Then I told him to stop. He said, “Ok.” But then he stole my covers. I was freezing that night. Swinger came to my game in the morning. We tied. Swinger did not like that we tied. He was screaming to the refs, “Let them go to overtime.”

That was my adventure with Swinger.

January Art Appreciation

This week Mrs. Walker taught the class about French artist Henri Matisse. The class was inspired by his creative use of color and patterns. Using paper, paste, and balloons, students created fun graphic sculptures. Below are two short videos documenting the process and the final pieces of artwork. What a fantastic job the students did working together to create art!





Matisse Sculptures

Filip's Adventures with Swinger

On Saturday my dad woke me up early because I had to go to the worst place in the universe – Polish school. It was early morning and the school was located in Palatine in the high school building. Of course Swinger could not understand anything the teacher said but he was extremely happy that he could meet my friends.

We learned about adjectives – “przymiotniki”, I explained to Swinger what it means and translated him some examples from Polish like “zielony - green”, or “brzydki – ugly”, or “nudny - boring”.

When Swinger and I got home we undecorated the Christmas tree. He played around with the decorations and climbed the tree.

He helped us by getting the ornaments at the top. After that we went to bed. The next day we went to The Field Museum. First we tried to find Swinger’s family. Swinger was glad to see his friends but he was horrified to see that they are stuffed.

Next we had to go see The Greeks exhibition. We saw old vases, statutes, columns, gold, pottery, swords, daggers, coins and other stuff. Most of these items were priceless.

Statue of Alexander the Great. He was a young king – emperor he died of a fever at the age of 32.   Greece has roots in theater, philosophy, geometry, sculpture, architecture, and poetry. 

After that we ate pizza. After lunch we saw the Egyptian exhibit they had cool stuff like mummies and parts of buildings.

Last we saw dinosaurs and Hall of Gems. Gems were so beautiful and shiny. Swinger and I had so much fun this weekend!!!