All Good Things Must Come to an End

We are so glad families had the experience of visiting our Ancient Egypt Museum. It was wonderful to see our second graders proudly sharing their wealth of knowledge. While we look forward to our next unit of study, we have assured the students that they can continue to explore ancient Egypt on their own with their amazing research skills.

There is a special event taking place at the museum this weekend:
Egyptomania! takes over the Penn Museum
Saturday, March 21, 11:00 am - 4:00 pm

It's a celebration of all things Egyptian at this World Culture Day. Egyptomania! brings the galleries to life with a variety of activities including hieroglyph workshops, Middle Eastern drumming and folk dancing, a “What in the World” artifact game—and short talks from renowned Penn Museum Egyptologists.

Perhaps there will be a rainy day over spring break when your child might enjoy this wonderful video, Building Pharaoh's Ship.
On PBS: http://video.pbs.org/video/2331305481/

Or if you have Amazon Prime Instant Video:
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Pharaohs-Ship/dp/B003E4AXJC/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1426687801&sr=1-1&keywords=Building+Pharaoh%27s+Ship

Here is a link to a few (well, maybe more than a few) photos from our trip to the Penn Museum: 
Field Trip photos
And here is a link to photos from Egypt Night: Egypt Night Photos

Pajama Day is next Wednesday!

Come to school in your pajamas on Wednesday!  Sometimes it's fun to have a wacky Wednesday.

Kindergarten's Maple Sugaring Trip

Our kindergarten classes were delighted to have many family members join us on a beautiful day to learn about maple sugaring. Our lesson at the Churchville Nature Center began with a Lenape legend that answered a student's question, "How did they know how to do this?" Then, we learned about the parts of a tree and how they function by making a live kindergarten tree!

Next, we went outside to get a firsthand look at the process to make maple syrup.  We  had a chance to see how the trees are tapped and taste freshly collected sap, we practiced drilling in a maple branch and saw where the water would be cooked off.  Then, to our taste buds' fancy, we tried artificial syrup and pure maple syrup.  We really liked them both, but our taste buds were able to pick out the pure maple syrup.

We are fortunate to live in the only region in the world that has just the right elements to allow maple sugaring to happen!  If you weren't able to join us in person, follow our visit in the slide show.  You can see the snowy weather we had last week in the background and the wonderful, sunny day we experienced on our trip!  It was SWEET!!

This free slideshow design made with Smilebox

April Book Group for Adults

                        Lower School Book Club

Join us for our next Lower School Book Club for adults led by Ann Botel-Barnard, our Language Arts Specialist. We are excited to come together to share a love for a great story!

Book: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Location: Lower School Library

Date: Monday, April 6, 2015 from 8:00-9:00am.

Enjoy a light breakfast and great conversation as we discuss what we loved about the book, what we had questions about and what we could connect to. Feel free to join us even if you have not read the entire book. You will still have a lot to contribute and the discussion will enhance your reading of the book. You are welcome to bring adult friends and relatives that are also interested in discussing this book.

RSVP: Ann Botel-Barnard  abotelbarnard@abingtonfriends.net

This powerful novel explores what it means to be a family in conventional and unusual ways. Of course, what family today is not a little unusual? As you read this engaging novel, you will feel a range of emotions from joy to sorrow and from questioning to a sense of resolution.  Karen Joy Fowler won the Penn/Faulkner Award for best fiction writing in 2014 for this book and was one of only two American authors shortlisted for the 2014 Mann Booker prize.

4th Grade Visits the Philadelphia Flower Show!

We had an absolutely wonderful trip to the Philadelphia Flower Show on Tuesday!  This trip was the culmination of our partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Meadowbrook Farm. It was quite an exciting day, filled with all kinds of wonderful surprises!  

Taking the train into town was very adventurous!

When we arrived, Jacqueline Fisher from PHS met us to lead us through the show.

First, we had a special surprise!  Jacqueline treated us to the Butterfly Experience exhibit.  It was quite an amazing experience.  The students had Q-tips with nectar to entice the butterflies to come to them.  There were so many butterflies!

One of the highlights was seeing our "Pennock Plates" which are the sculpted plates the students made which were inspired by plates found in the Pennock home at Meadowbrook Farm.  The students hadn't seen the plates after they were glazed, so it was quite wonderful to see them for the first time at the show!  This was our science/art project that was done with the staff of Meadowbrook Farm.

Next it was time to explore the show with Jacqueline. She explained to us how the exhibits come together, and we talked about the inspiration for the different displays. Favorites included Cinderella, Nightmare before Christmas, Tarzan and Frozen. Other favorites included the jewelry made from plant material and the pressed flower pictures. It was a truly magical day! In the words of one student: "I really didn't expect to love it so much. I thought it would just be a lot of flowers. But it was so much more than that. I felt like I was transported into a whole new world."

Drumming in Early Childhood

In the Early Childhood classrooms, we have been playing different types of drums! 

We started by learning a rhyme:

Snowflakes, snowflakes all around,

Whirling, twirling to the ground,

Softly, softly floating down,

Snowflakes, snowflakes all around.

Here is a VIDEO of the Cardinals version!

We also discovered that we could feel the vibrations of the drums when we lay on the floor!

Check out this YouTube VIDEO of the Cardinals Rumbling!

Here's a look at some of the drums we have be using:

Hand Drums (Frame Drums) come in different sizes and we hold them in one hand while we use the other hand to play.

The Gathering drum is normally play with mallets but we played it with our hands. We sit on the floor with this drum and it is big enough to share with a friend!

The Tubano drum also comes in different sizes. They are all the same height but are different widths. the bigger the drum the lower the sound.

2nd Grade Egypt Masks in Art

The second graders have fully embraced their study of Ancient Egypt and have been exploring Egyptian art motifs and ancient figures in art class. The second grade artists started their process by examining images of funerary masks from Ancient Egypt. The students designed their own masks, imagining themselves in Ancient Egypt as a regular person, a pharaoh, a queen, an anubis or even a cat! They created a plan for their designs and built additional features to add to their masks, like beards, ears or hair.

Once the planning was complete, they joined the resource teachers during Community Time to create their masks out of plaster. The students worked collaboratively and took turns being the model for the creation of a mask or one of the creators. As a group, we discussed how it would feel to be the model, how we can check in with each other and how important trust was in our group. When the students were ready, they got to lie down on the table, close their eyes and let their peers get to work laying down plaster strips on their face.

After the plaster hardened, the students were amazed to see their likeness in sculpture form! They then had the chance to add on their additional sculptural elements and fill in their noses and their mask forms were complete. The second graders are looking forward to painting and decorating their masks.