Gardening

Check this out! What a fun-filled learning day at the University of Values!



Thanks to Ms. Sylvia for remembering to get the video camera and doing such a great job interviewing everyone!!...and thanks to Shaquomm Dodd, my summer intern, for editing the video.

A Smile For The Day!

The kids never cease to amaze me! I was walking around monitoring the classes yesterday, when to my surprise, I noticed this sign on the Kindergarten class door.

I glanced at it first, then I took a step back just to see what this wonderful sign said. First of all, Let me tell you what it was made of. The middle of the sign was cardboard and around it was all these tiny hands made from construction paper that look like they were waving at me, it was like they were saying, Hey! Come over here, we have something to tell you. Then I stopped and read the sign. It was sooo! cute. The sign said, The Earth Is Worth Protecting, then it gave all these reasons why. It touched my heart.

I thought it was great, and it looked pretty beautiful just like the earth. See! the kids really are learning about the importance of our earth and what it means to keep it beautiful.

Our day in the garden!

Today was one of the best days working in the garden we may of ever had. We put layers upon layers of mulch and dried leaves on top of soaked newspapers. The kids took to it very well; they even got the teachers to stop hiding in the shade and get out in the sun to help. They had so much fun planting the different foods and watering them. I want to have more days like this but with more shade.

Tech Class

These are some pictures of the tech class working on making their mini videos. They seem to really like it lets hope it stays that way.

Two Smaller Classes Get Together To Do BIG Things

This past week has been full of vacations at the University of Values Summer Camp, and a couple of days out of the week we've had to have class without quite a few of our campers. On Tuesday Ms. Anna and I decided to join Ms. Nazareth and Ms. Lauren in their class. As soon as we entered into the chilly room we knew instantly that we'd made the right decision in combining the classes. The lesson was focused solely on Earth and its layers and what's a better way to teach 1, 2, and 3rd graders this concept than with icecream. Ms. Nazareth came up with a brilliant idea, edible Earth's! We used pie crust to emphasize Earth's crust, vanilla ice cream for Earth's mantle, strawberries for Earth's outer core, and finally chocolate syrup for Earth's inner core. The lesson went well and it tasted GREAT too!!!!!

Worm Composting!!!

I know! I know! The title sounds a little out there but bear with me. Today we learned about how worms work to help us help the world. Today the studens learned how worms help keep the soil healthy enough for things like plants and trees to grow. They seemed so interested in these little creatures it was amazing to see how quick they took to the lesson.

Caring for Each Other

I must take this opportunity to brag on a few of the University of values students. Today we had two new additions to the program and two of our current students demonstrated one of the three major characteristics we have been teaching. For the past few weeks we have been covering three very important characteristics, Caring, Manners and greetings.

We all know those warm fuzzy feeling we get deep inside ourselves when someone steps outside the box to make us feel like we are apart of something. Today I saw two of my students step out of their way to welcome people into our program. This morning Darahjanee came to me and told me that she had taught our new student how we greet in our program she then proceeded to ask me if she could show her around the program. Of course I couldn't refuse! It is awesome to see Darahjanee step into a leadership role to help others. I must admit I felt like a proud mama.

Another child that stepped up to the "caring plate" was Kwame. Today Kwame showed me caring by helping me color pictures for our ocean shadow box. We had a great talk about his favorite teacher and subject. Soon, we were joined by a few of the other children. Kwame was more than willing to share our special time with the other children, he even helped many of the younger children get coloring sheets and crayons. But the one thing that truly blew me away was when a new student Tarion came to join our group. Kwame. in a very polite tone, asked, "Will you please tell me your name?" when she responded Kwame made awesome eye contact and replied, "Thank you. It's very nice to meet you." It was such a grown up conversation that Kwame initiated himself without being prompted.

Last week we made a "caring robot" which after much deliberation Hayzul named "
Nikki." Nikki is a very hungry robot who loves to eat lightbulbs. Now these lightbulbs aren't just any lightbulbs. On each bulb there is a place for a name and description. This gives children the opportunity to observe each other and look for situations in which they demonstrate caring, manner and greetings. The children love to write positive words and feed them to Nikki.

I am so proud of each and every one of our kids but special shines to Kwame and Darahjanee for the day. Keep up the good work!!

Landfills

Today was a very interesting day; we took the kids to vist a landfill. They seemed very interested on where the trash they threw away finally ended up.

After the tour we played some games and won some prizes. It was a chance to see if what we were teaching our students were sticking with them, ( and it is.)

Our youngest scientist are the brightest......

Look at them trying to decide which type of light bulb will give off the
most heat and which will be the brightest.

We had one student, Trinity Taylor, who thought the compact fluorescent light(CFL)bulb would be cooler to the touch and give off just as much light. However her fellow students were thinking just the opposite. She had an insight during the probing session and you could see her realize what the answer might be from her expression. It was priceless.

We ran the test for 1 minute for each bulb and of course the new CFL bulb is cooler to their hands held over the lampshade. At this point Trinity reveals that her sister has this type of bulb in her lamp and she thought it seemed cooler.
We can even remove the CFL bulb easily because it never got as hot as the older type bulb.

The children share that their families use some of the new bulbs at home, but also are still using the older bulbs. We'll get a chance to "estimate" what kind of impact our children's families would have on reducing their electrical cost when the K-1 class's home electric bulb usage surveys are returned next week.

Now the kids can tell their parents with conviction that the CFL last longer and uses less electricity, not to mention that it does not heat up the room the way the older bulbs do. Jada Kelley, Aviant Blaylock, Angel Tate, and Jailyn Vickers have "seen the lights" so to speak.

Science Rocks!!!!!

Bring the Heat

Today the 2nd and 3rd grade class created their own thermomaters. We took an empty water bottle added water, rubbing alcohol and food coloring to them. We then placed a straw into the mixture and surrounded it with molding clay. The children learned that when it is hot the liquid goes up into the straw and when it gets colder the liquid mixture goes back down.

This project was very intriguing for both the children and the teachers. When Ms. Nazareth attempted the experiment this morning it did not work like she had planned. We were hesitant to try again. However the second we took the kids' projects out Ishmael's liquid almost out of his straw. There was laughter from all 5 of the children and Hayzul exclaimed, "It must be 100 degrees out here!" Kwame then realized that if he put his hands around the molding clay, the heat from his hands would make the mixture rise up the straw.

When I asked the children what they learned by doing this experiment Darahjanee told me that she learned that sometimes when you do an experiment it does not always work out the way you want it to and you just have to understand the before you start. Ms. Danielle helped our class make the thermomaters and when we took them outside she made a comment that she wanted to make one at her home. This then led to a discussion about how we, as a class, could teach people at the enviroment fair on how to make these very special themomaters.

Rock Painting

Today, Ms. Anna had an idea to paint rocks to put outside in our garden. So Ms. Anna and Ms.Lauren's classes went outside to gather smooth rocks to paint. We didn't find many smooth rocks but gathered as many rocks as we could. We all worked very hard on our rocks. There were so many different designs! There were ladybugs, spiderman symbols, and many more.

I believe that we all had fun creating our art.

-Vanessa