Raney's Rock Stars: Week of October 5, 2020

This week was full of exploration, discovery, geometric shapes, and the beginning of reading groups. Throughout the week, students spent time exploring the brook. They found a small fish, frogs, and several new fungi species. In math this week, students worked through our math menu and learned about various polygons. Additionally, students were able to create equilateral, isosceles, and scalene triangles out of natural materials. In ELA, students began working in their reading groups. While working outside, it has been very important for students to demonstrate responsibility and willingness to stay on task without the direct supervision of an adult. This is no easy task, and I am very impressed with the amount of responsibility students have demonstrated toward their learning. Students have proven themselves to stay on task while working at their hammock spaces, in the field, and under our tarp space. Lastly, we ended our week with a day of play in celebration of earning over $1,500 Otter bucks! Students spent the day exploring new hills, creating imaginative games of wizardry and one group even deemed themselves part of a "survivor group", building their own fire pit and collecting rare wood crystal from blue fungus mined out of fallen logs.

Questions to spark conversation:

1. What is the sledding hill? Describe it to me.

2. What changes have you noticed in the woods this week? Why are those changes happening?

3. What book are you reading in your reading group? Tell me about the book.

4. Can you build me an equilateral triangle? What makes it an equilateral triangle? What are its attributes?

Here are some pictures from the week: