The Exploratorium!

One of the best things about being a teacher is going on fieldtrips.  Like my students, I love exploring new places.  It’s also fun to spend a day out of our normal routine. 
This week the 2/3 MAP classes ventured into San Francisco to visit the Exploratorium, a museum of science and human perception.  Since I am relatively new to the area, this was my first time to the Exploratorium.  What a wondrous place!  I was amazed at the vast space, and the sheer number of hands-on exhibits. 
Rather than expound on my experience, I decided to do what any smart teacher would do—delegate the task to the kids.  Enjoy their writing below.

“My class went on a fieldtrip to the Exploratorium!  My favorite part was the shadow room.  It would count down on a little screen and you would get in a position against the wall.  A bright light would flash and capture your shadow on the wall.  Ms. Emily joined us.  We did a lot of handstands. 
I personally think the grossest part was the water fountain.  It was a toilet that had never been used but I think they added smell.  I learned that even if it’s not true but it really seems similar your other senses may change.  After that accident of drinking from it yesterday no water from any water fountain has tasted good.”  --Sophia

“When I went to the Exploratorium I went to many fun exhibits.  I went to the colored shadow wall, the shadow room, the bubble room, and much much more.  But my ultimate favorite was the mini-movie theater.  First I watched this movie with Tori that had people chewing really sour gum and we got to see all the funny faces that they made.  It was real fun!” --Sacha

“On 1-20-2011 Room 5 and Room 6 of Manor School went to the Exploratorium.  It was fun.  We saw so many exhibits but my favorite was this cone thing.  There was this big cone thing that had a bunch of marbles for it.  How it worked, you would take a marble, put it in and it would spin down.   It was really cool!  It made me think of geometric shapes ‘cause the cone is a cone and the marbles are spheres.  I had a great time.” --Anya

“Yesterday our class went to the Exploratorium. One of my favorite exhibits was this… shadow thingy.  You stand there and your shadow comes out as a rainbow.  One of the staff got a broom and covered the lights one at a time.  Each time it made a lot of the rainbow lights disappear.  It was so totally cool!”
--Skylar

“Yesterday Room 5 went to the Exploratorium and you can’t imagine how fun it was.  I will tell you about a water fountain that might sound boring but it’s not because it’s a toilet water fountain.  I liked it because its funny and you can say that you drank out of the toilet.  It looks like a toilet with a water fountain thing to drink out of and you pressed a button on the water fountain thing.” --Pema

“Room 5 went on a fieldtrip to the Exploratorium!  I don’t know what my favorite exhibit was but I will tell you about the shadow room.  There was a flash machine that froze your shadow!  It was hard to jump.  I tried to do Kung Fu moves.  They did not work.  It made me think like I was a shadow!” --Aidan

“Yesterday, I went to the Exploratorium with Rooms 5 and 6.  At the end I went to the back.  There is a lie machine and I think it’s a lie detector.  There are cards with questions and “picture yourselves” and two little finger clips.  A whole bunch of people in our class were gathering around the lie detector.  When Tori’s fingers were clipped in she sang Happy Birthday so loudly.  (The “tell you to do” was: “sing a short song loud.  Loud enough for strangers to hear you.  Try “Happy Birthday” or “The Star Spangled Banner”.)  I laughed.  When I was clipped in, Tori told a joke, and my line went right up.  My line is a line (purple) that goes up and down on the lie detector, up for excitement and down for calm.  It was so great!  I will definitely go back there sometime.  It was cool enough!  I liked how I could be so excited.  It was very funny!  Next time you go to the Exploratorium, I’m sure you will have a fantastic time!”  --Ruby

“Room 5 and Room 6 went to the Exploratorium.  Me and Pema and Meleah and Kathryn went to the movies and saw a really gross movie.  People were eating cows eyes and they couldn’t do it.  I learned cow eyes are gross.” --Liza

“I went to the Exploratorium yesterday.  At the end of the day I found a pinball machine.  I think I liked that the most.  Then I found a basketball game and that was cool because you had to wear glasses that made the hoop wiggly.  I figured out that it was easy to play it.” --Jeremy

“Yesterday I went to the Exploratorium for a fieldtrip.  It was a fun one.  When we got inside we got to try out a lot of the experiments.  My favorite was the tornado which is where you walk in a circle to make it.  I learned that air makes it go.” --Diego

“When I went to the Exploratorium yesterday I went to three fun exhibits.  The first one was an exhibit where you have to walk [quietly] on gravel and try to get the lowest amount of points possible.  The average is probably about 7.0 if you don’t cheat and you actually try to be quiet.  I walked on the sides though; I got 0.3 points.  Well that’s the first one, now on to the next.
The second one was in the Shadow Room.  It was a counting down camera that froze your shadows on to the wall.  First I tried to jump when it took a picture.  I failed.  The second time I did a handstand.  I looked like a guy with shoes on his hands and no head.  The third time Skylar and Connor tried to pick me up.  We just looked like a big blob of blackness.  That one was just chaos. 
The third exhibit was an exhibit where you put glasses on and you try to shoot baskets with a mini hoop and mini ball.  The glasses tricked your eyes and made you shoot to the right of the hoop.” --Kaden

“Yesterday my class and Ms. Erika’s class went on a fieldtrip to the Exploratorium.  I think the shadow room was the best exhibit.  Ms. Emily, Maya, Ruby, Serena, Nadia, Sophia, Anya, Liza, Skylar, and me were laughing, counting, and screaming the same time “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!!!”  At one, a beeping noise [sounded] and we tried to jump at the flash.  I learned that would not work.  The way I learned that was because I tried it over and over again and again and it did not work!”  --Nancy

“Yesterday my class and Miss Erika’s class and I went to the Exploratorium.  When we got there we got together and went inside.  I was amazed how quiet the place was.  We made our way through the front part of the place.  One of our first exhibits was the air part…” --Connor

“My class and I went on a fieldtrip to the Exploratorium!!  Most the things were fun but my favorite thing was the toilet.  It’s a water fountain.  I drank from it twice!  Nancy drank from it once.  Ruby also drank from it twice.  But when it was my turn I drank for a long time.  My mom took pictures.  The good thing was that the water didn’t taste bad at all.  It tasted great!
Next to the toilet was a sign and I learned that if there was an earthquake you’re supposed to drink from a toilet.  I thought it was fascinating. 
A good thing is no one ever used the toilet, plus the flusher does not work.” --Maya

“Yesterday Room 5 and 6 went on a fieldtrip to the Exploratorium.  One of my favorite exhibits was the video game!  On the video game you were a spaceship and you use the buttons to turn right and turn left and to go faster (you go really slow).  If you crash into a mountain you get 5 points.  If you land on part of the mountain that says 2X you get 10 points.  If you land on a part of the mountain that says 5X you get 25 points.  This video game was what inspired me to become an astronaut when I was young.  This was the best fieldtrip ever!”
--Alexander

“I loved the Tinker Room.  You make a ship and see if it floats.  Mine goes really fast!  It floats like a helicopter.  It was made with toilet paper tubes.  Everybody said mine was the best but it wasn’t.  I was tied with Aidan.”  --Miles

“Yesterday my class went to the Exploratorium, a museum with lots of cool exhibits.  One of my favorites was this thing where you put two fingers on these electric pads and you turn this electric knob.  It sends electric on the pads into your body.  I think that if you turned the knob fast enough it would be like touching electricity!”  --Orion

“Yesterday my class and Ms. Erika’s class went to the Exploratorium.  It was so fun.  My favorite exhibit was the bubble screen.  It was fun.  Me and Sacha blew such big bubbles.  I blew one bigger than my head.  If you stuck your hand in the soapy water you could stick your hand in the bubble.  It was the best day ever!”
--Tori

Happy New Year, friends and family of Room 5!

It has been a while since the blog has seen an update.  It certainly is not for lack of material... more a factor of my mind being elsewhere, like on Winter Break!  But now we are back in full swing and it's time to let you know what is happening in Room 5.

I trust you all had a wonderful time with family and friends over Break.  The children have filled me in on some of the adventures, including Pema's trip to Washington, DC, and to her new favorite museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.  I know many of you traveled as well, some back East, some to Hollywood, some to Utah, and some lucky ducks to Mexico!  It sounds like some of you had a peaceful time at home as well.  In fact, I enjoyed meeting up with Aidan and Orion and their families to celebrate the winter solstice in Muir Woods.  What a magical night we shared walking through the big trees by candle light, thankfully with very little rain.

I had a wonderful holiday that started off with a bang at my family's 2nd Annual Tacky Christmas Party up in Sonoma at my sister and brother-in-law's cabin.  My father, step-mother, brother, and sister-in-law traveled out from Virginia to attend this year.  It was a festive way to kick off the holiday revelry and it gave me the opportunity to wear my Christmas Tree dress once more!  Gideon and I also made an impromptu trip to Lake Tahoe to spend time with old family friends at their home in South Tahoe.  It was our first time to Tahoe, and we had a blast skiing through trees in knee-deep powder.  It was an unexpected treat to experience "Winter" once again.

Prior to Winter Break, we had a great fun preparing for the holidays in Room 5.  Jeremy suggested that we have a craft day; I thought it sounded like a fun idea, so we had our first annual Holiday Craft Workshop the Monday before break.  The kids got their creative juices flowing making holiday cards, ornaments, and gifts.  Did you receive any of these special creations over the holidays?

 

Another highlight of the week before break was our Secret Elf gift exchange.  This was another idea presented to me by the kids.  After thinking it through, I agreed that we should try it in Room 5.  Each student filled out a secret questionnaire, answering questions such as “What is your favorite color? Book? Activity?”  The questionnaires were then randomly distributed to the class, with the task to make something by hand for the classmate they received.  I was not sure what to expect as I reminded the kids daily to bring in their gifts.  By the Friday before break, all the students had brought in homemade, hand-wrapped gifts.

After a class discussion of what it means to give and to receive, the gifts were presented one at a time for the students to open.  Parents, all I can say is that this gift exchange was one of the most precious things I have ever witnessed.  The children were so very excited about the the gifts they received, and even more excited about gifts they had created for their friends.  They could not wait for their gifts to be opened!  One of the gifts included a homemade Pokemon coloring book for Brad made by Liza.  Brad's response was an enormous grin and an exclamation of, “I don't know how you knew exactly what I wanted for Christmas!”  Other gifts included a bear made out of toilet paper rolls, a name plate carved on a wooden board, a finger-knitted scarf, and a scrumptious candy-coated apple.  The only unfortunate thing about the gift exchange was that my camera ran out of batteries and I could not capture more of the moments for you to see.

For the last hour of the day, we enjoyed our class party, hosted by our room parents and other helpers.  The kids played holiday charades (Kaden acted out a very convincing jingle bell), decorated gingerbread men, and sipped mulled apple cider.  Sophia helped our classroom rat, Lily, get into the holiday spirit with a homemade Santa hat.  That young lady has a gift for making tiny, fashionable rat outfits!  With fresh batteries in my camera, I enjoyed capturing some of the moments on film.  I am sure you will sense the joy that filled our hearts as we celebrated the holidays together.

 

Now we have set off into a new year together.  Our first week back was full of satisfying  moments when all of the kids were engaged in some kind of individualized learning activity.  We have embarked on a revamped word study program; we had a fun center time playing map skills games; we interviewed one another on how we show the character trait of “self-control”; we studied geometry in math; and created marble runs with Carolyn in science.  Most notably, we started practicing our class play, “James and the Giant Peach”.  The kids are so excited about this and beg every day to rehearse.  My hope is to present the show in April, after the school play “The Wiz” is wrapped up. 

We are off to a running start in 2011.  My goal is to use our class time wisely, in a way that maximizes student learning and holds true to the tenants of the MAP philosophy.  With creativity and discipline, I am confident that, together, we can make it happen.  Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2011!