Monday, May 25, 2009

School's Out For Summer

The school girls finished their last week on Friday. As with most schools, the last week had very little classroom time and lots of outdoor time: a field trip to the zoo, class parties, field day (with a Harry Potter theme--very fun), and the annual Core Knowledge Assembly. Core Knowledge is one of the curriculum programs the school uses. It covers history, science, and social studies. The music and PE teachers plan around the curriculum, and on this day each year the students put on a program of dance and music that correlate to their Core Knowledge subjects. I like that it's not a canned program and instead has new songs and dances each year. In seventh and eighth grades, each student studies a musical instrument, and this year the orchestra students accompanied several grades' dances. At the end, the guitar students (acoustic and electric) played two rock pieces that the students went nuts over. I was seriously impressed by how much restraint they had shown up to that point because when they all stormed the asphalt screaming and jumping around--there were even some crowd surfers--the contrast in behavior was quite remarkable. The first picture is #3's first grade class dancing around the Maypole. You can see her in the bottom left corner. #2 is dancing a country waltz in the second picture. When I posted the picture, I noticed her partner wasn't dressed as a cowboy or in uniform...and then I noticed he's not even in her class. I have no idea who that kid is! #1 is dancing a sword dance in the last picture. (She's at the left.) They did a cool part where they overlapped their swords to form stars that they held up and danced around, but I didn't get a good shot of that. Trust me, it was cool.
This school year was good, but we're all looking forward to sleeping in for a few months. ;o)
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1 comment:

Charlotte said...

That looks like a great end of year thing. My kids have never had a big deal. We still have a month to decide what we want to do with summer- school isn't out till June 23rd (crazy, no?)