All the news that's fit to (virtually) print from this week!  

On the heels of our Costa Rica and 7th grade solo weeks, we've ramped up our Capstone and Milestone work, and have begun to dig into our sustainability studies.  

Here are some highlights

• Spanish 7: We are memorizing the first stanza of a Spanish children's rhyme about oranges. Ask if your young person can recite it?  Also, ask what are some differences they have noticed between the conjugations of regular versus irregular verbs?
• Spanish 8: Now that they are back from Costa Rica and have written reflections, what more can they share about the trip?  And now that we are back studying grammar, particularly numbers, how do you write 1,167 in Spanish? How do you write "two plus two is four?"
• Art: 7/8s are starting a group installation piece based on the work of Tara Donovan, an artist who transforms every day manufactured objects into astounding works of art, forcing us to look closer at the materials that surround us. The project was introduced with a macro/micro slideshow where students tried to discern what massive quantities of single media were put together to create large scale installations. Ask your student about this work and what materials went into making it.
• Nat's Math Section: We have moved into geometric studies, and geometric constructions.  Ask what a platonic solid is, and how many there are.  Ask about making some of these out of playing cards! (See below for where this project is headed) ...And ask how to bisect an angle, or construct a perpendicular bisector with a compass and ruler.
• Academic Adventure Field Work: Students went into the field and interviewed experts about the waste stream, fair trade, solar energy, and sustainable island living.  Ask what they learned that surprised them the most on this trip.
• Tinkering in Bridge's words:   We had a lot of people absent from tinkering this week, but the students who were there continued to work on finishing a couple of projects in tinkering. One group is working to finish their wooden copy of a metal cabinet. This week, they attached the door with a couple of hinges, which proved to be harder than it looked. In the end, the group realized that another hinge in the middle of the door will be needed in the future and a bottom needed to be attached to the shelving unit to give the door clearance to swing open and close without scraping the floor. Another group decided to paint the backing of their shelving unit white to create a startling visual impact. Other students continued to work on finishing their toothpick bridges that we started back in November. Ask your middle schooler what kind of lessons they are learning about finishing projects. Do they think that there is a time limit to how long a project is interesting?

Upcoming

• Next Wednesday April 3 is a half day
• Great for the little ones.... Alice In Wonderland

Friday April 5 at 4:30pm and Sunday April 7 at 2:00pm

Jessie Auditorium

FREE

Running time: 45 mins

• In collaboration with STAGES, Inc.. Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance

Tuesday April 9 at 7:00pm and Thursday April 11 at 4:00pm and 7:00pm

Jessie Auditorium

FREE

• Stay tuned for details of our art and math show to be displayed after April break. All middle school math students have begun or will begin exploring ways in which math and art relate to each other.