Adventurers Team

                                                                   Team teachers Pam Wise/Joplin James

 

Welcome to Adventurers’ Parentlink message for Friday, January 18th.

 

 On Monday we welcomed our U.V.M. Intern, Megan Seaman, to our team.  This is her final semester at U.V.M. and she will be with us full time until May.  She would like to introduce herself.

 

Hello to everyone, I am so glad to be here in Shelburne this semester. My first few days on the Adventurer team have been wonderful.  I would like to let you all know a bit about myself, and what I enjoy doing in my spare time.  I play ultimate Frisbee and was on the UVM women’s ultimate team for two years.  I have a passion for the arts and love to dance.  I have practiced many types of dance since the age of four, so as you can imagine and may have heard, “Pilabolus” was a real treat.  I also love the theatre and have been in several musicals including Annie, Oliver and Guys and Dolls.  I bring experience working with children to the classroom having interned in many other schools throughout Burlington, as well as counseling at summer camps and tutoring children as a member of the American Reads program.  After graduation this May I plan to take some time to travel and following that, I hope to attend graduate school and teach in the Boston area.  I am looking forward to a wonderful semester and hope that I will get the chance to meet all of you!

 

This semester we also have a student from Champlain College who will be with us two days a week. Her name is Domye Arre  and she will introduce herself in Parentlink next week. We are very glad to have Megan and Domye with us.

 

In preparation for the Pilobolus performance, we had the extraordinary opportunity to work with local dance Martha Ming. She had everyone moving and thinking creatively about the forms our bodies can make and how we can tell a story through dance. Everyone came up with wonderful shapes balancing with a partner and independently. Then on Friday, after French, library, Yoga, and good snack to keep us going, we boarded the bus for our trip to the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts to see Pilobolus. And we were astounded, amused, startled, and thrilled by the performance.  We hope you have heard all about it from your child already, but if not be sure to ask. In particular we would encourage you to ask about how the dancers used collaboration. As we boarded the bus we counted extra carefully since we knew some students were tempted to go backstage after the show to join the company.

 

Somehow on Friday we managed to devote some time to discuss the life of Martin Luther King, whose birthday we will celebrate and Monday. We talked about how important his life’s work was as a leader and how he gave his life to help us learn that we cannot solve our problems through violence. Although our leaders today have not learned this lesson, he continues to be an inspiration to us all.  The homework for this weekend is for each student to ask a parent what they have learned about the life of MLK and be prepared to share with the class.

 

Last week we finished watching and discussing a video about author/illustrator Leo Lionni so we thought we would make pictures the way he did.  The Art Project for the week was to paint a background and then use colored paper to cut out other items for the picture.  We all tried to make a mouse for our picture the way Leo Lionni. did, by tearing the body shape.  He said that it makes the mouse look fluffy and furry.  We found this more difficult than it sounded but our results are wonderful!

 

For sharing last week, Eric impressed us with his talents for building card towers, so the challenge for this week was to see what kind architecture could be created with playing cards.

 

Brooke provided us with a very challenging Estimating Jar this week. She filled it with weaving loops.  It was difficult to tell if they were put in loosely or packed tightly together.  It looked like there were thousands or a million of them, but we didn’t think there could really be that many.  Dana’s estimate of 312 came the closest, so she’ll fill it for next week.

 

Our Adventurers Parent meeting this Monday was well attended. Not only did we work on planning some of the upcoming Adventurers events but we also had some work time. The covered over 70 books for our accelerated reader collection and the children collated over 100 goals packets under the supervision of Joplin’s daughter Anika James. Coming up on Friday February 1st is our Adventurers Family Fun night 6:00-7:30. We always look forward to this evening and we hope your family is planning to be there. Several parents volunteered to help coordinate the activities and procure the ice cream, and we usually have some 8th graders to help out with the games but with a couple more adult helpers it’ll make it easy and fun for everyone. Please contact us if you could help out with the preparation or clean-up that evening. We also need a bunch chaperones for our Catamount Winter Sports day on Friday, February 8th (backup date 2/15) to help lace ice skates, lead some x-country skiers through the woods and show how to get the best run on the sledding hill. Actually we usually have more than enough people who want to join us on that day, so please let us know soon if you are hoping to come. Also be thinking about joining the in-crowd who gets to choose the math activities for the spring math night on April 5th. Jos Vandal gets to lead the group this time, but let us know if you would like to be one of the lucky ones to plan and lead the activities.

Finally, we discussed the year end trip. This year we’re planning to travel east instead of north. Our destination will be the Montshire museum in Norwich, Vermont. We discussed the merits and costs of hiring a coach instead of using the school bus. The cost would be about $10 per student. We have yet to decide so we would welcome your input on this question, if you have an opinion.

 

 This coming Thursday, February 21, from 9-9:30 AM, is the kindergarten French/Music concert in the cafeteria.  Students will be singing songs in French, as well as songs about winter. 

 

If you would like to plan ahead for March conferences, please go to our homepage and link to the March conferences to find out what times are available and then email us with the time so we can put you on.

 

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jjames@shelburne.k12.vt.us
Last updated: January 23, 2002