Author: Marisa Palmer

It was a quieter week with a couple of learners out, but we had a great time at Acton nevertheless.

Making Learning Compelling and FUN!

As you know, our team attended the annual Acton Owner’s Conference a couple of weekends ago. It was great to learn from other owners and experienced guides. Our goals for heroes in the elementary studio is that they love learning and can get along with others. A key takeaway from the conference was that we can do that by fostering an environment where children are doing important work plus playing lots of challenging games. The latter, in particular, fosters that love of learning.

So, we’ve been looking around and seeing where we can inject more fun and challenging games to entice learners to love a subject without even realizing it. One area where we would like to incorporate this “gamification” is into math. 

To that end, I have compiled a wish list of games, games and more games. We’ve crowdsourced these from other Actons who use these during Friday rewards, free time, and create “math centers” that can be used during core skills.

You will also see Civ games, Strategy games, Financial Literacy games, Spatial games and puzzles on that list. Some of you have asked me how you can help the school and this would be one way if you would like to contribute a game that resonates with you and what you want for your child(ren). We would be happy with new or used materials!

PS – over the summer we will create a makerspace donation list of household items. I just need some time to go through next year’s quests and do a rough inventory the makerspace 🙂

Writers’ Workshop – Pitch a Field Trip

The children critiqued each other’s pitches, provided feedback for revisions. Next week they will edit and practice their pitches. There are two options for the field trip that they determined and researched within parameters: Henry Vilas Zoo or Wingra Boats. The children will vote in two weeks on which they prefer! This is certainly a great exercise in persuasive writing 🙂 Note: they will travel to the location via walking and bus.

Quest – Newton’s Physics of Toys

This week we learned about buoyancy by building a raft and maximizing the amount of weight it could hold. The heroes were inspired by a short video we watched of a survivalist building a raft from inflated garbage bags and large tree branches (apparently garbage bags have many wonderful survival uses, so be sure to pack them next time you are wandering in the wilderness). The heroes used balloons for their design and as a result, were extremely successful is loading their raft with pennies!

They also explored elasticity and Hooke’s law by building a rubber band rope and attaching weights to it. At different weights (number of pennies), they measured how far the rubber band stretched. Based on their findings, and knowledge of Hooke’s law, they were given a length to achieve, and predicted and tested the number of pennies (weight) needed to achieve that length. The team was successful getting to a stretched length of 17.5″ on one try!

After each challenge, the children complete a reflection on the challenge where they dive more deeply into, and strengthen their understanding of, the physics concepts at play. This week, the concepts were buoyancy, displacement and Archimedes’ Law of Floatation, as well as elasticity and Hooke’s law. The reflections ask them to consider what they did and observed, what worked, what didn’t, and to put these physics concepts into their own words.

Phys Ed

The heroes are learning about different body systems by using them and experiencing them. For instance, exploring “proprioception” by standing on a trampoline and catching and throwing a ball. They’ve also been exploring hand-eye coordination, muscular strength, muscular endurance and the vestibular system.
The heroes also came up with guidelines for creating their cooperative game:

• Ask heroes if it’s too hard before committing to a part of the game. 
• Try different ideas before deciding what to incorporate.
• Make it so every hero wants to participate.
• It uses a ball for a portion of the game.
• It uses a movement we’ve practiced over the last 3 weeks.
• No one gets hurt.

So that is something they will be working on for the next few weeks.

Music

The children seem to be really enjoying music! Ms. Christa brought in chimes this week and they are learning music theory through exploration. Ms. Christa has taught Montessori music, so we really like her experiential approach while also combining the fundamentals of music reading and composing.

Friday Reward

Our Friday reward was to play with toys that utilize elasticity. So the children played with kinetic sand and Play-Doh. The young sensory seekers enjoyed this very much!

Quest

This week we continued our “Newton’s Physics of Toys” quest. Last week, they built gravity-powered cars and tested them and competed in teams using a ramp. This week, the heroes built balloon-powered cars to explore the concepts of thrust and propulsion. The focus was Newton’s third law: that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

On Wednesday, we had a collaborative challenge where each team tested their car at different weights (using pennies) and created a car performance guide for the other team. Each team swapped cars, and both teams together competed on accuracy, trying to get less than 10′ cumulatively from the “X” marked on the floor. They had the choice between using a balloon-powered car or gravity-powered car. Both teams chose gravity because it was easier to isolate more variables using the ramp whereas how much the balloon was blown up was harder to measure. Way to go scientific method!

Disappearing Guide Game

We had a lot of fun this week playing the “Disappearing Guide Game.” In the spirit of encouraging heroes to become curious, independent, lifelong learners (one of our promises), we set a week-long challenge. If the heroes won, they earned time on Friday to play board games (a way to learn math skills, by the way!).
The heroes earned a point if a Guide answered their question. The Guides won a point if a hero asked them a question before checking “three B’s before G.” That means, check your brain, check a book, and check a buddy, before asking a Guide.”

It got pretty competitive, and the heroes won. But the Guides will have the opportunity to redeem themselves next week 🙂

The heroes chose “Ticket to Ride” as their board game, which we love because it teaches addition, geography and strategic thinking.

Core Skills

The Guide sat down with each learner this week to develop their new S.M.A.R.T. goals for the session. These should be coming home to you for you to see! Ask your child how he or she decided what to focus on!

We have also been focusing on setting more specific daily S.M.A.R.T. goals. Rather than saying, “I’m going to work on Khan Academy for 45 minutes,” we have been working on using the S.M.A.R.T. framework to set goals more like, “I’m going to master two skills on Kahn Academy by the end of Core Skills today which is 1.5 hours.” Now THAT is a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.

At the end of each core skills session, the heroes come together and reflect on what they achieved and if their S.M.A.R.T. goal(s) put them in their comfort, challenge, or panic zone. One learner said today, “When I have the ‘complete four circles’ goal in Dreambox it really helps push me!”

Writers’ Workshop

The children have been super motivated for this session’s writer’s workshop. This week, they chose one field trip idea (out of the three they researched) and fleshed it out in outline form, then wrote it up as a pitch. Next week they will practice their pitches verbally, so they will soon be ready to deliver their pitches and vote on their field trips. Persuasive writing and presenting is a wonderful and useful life skill!

Music

Music was a lot of fun this week! Ms. Christa shared her hero talk with us this week about how she had taken early music lessons, but after her teacher died, she taught herself music starting in fifth grade. Music has been her calling ever since! 

The children learned about beats and rhythm, as well as music notes. The children are enjoying it immensely, and one of them has talked with his parents about taking music lessons! We love seeing heroes develop new interests that they want to pursue and explore more. This is how they will all eventually find their callings.

The sun and heat have brought with them a lot of energy at school! Also a lot of enthusiasm. 
It was a short week with the holiday, so here are a few things to note:

Core Skills:

We are noticing the children work best when they have a core skills schedule. The Guide will meet with each hero next week to map out their S.M.A.R.T. goals for the last session of the year. Some of them are close to earning badges in either math, reading, or spelling and grammar!

Quest:

This session’s quest is Newton’s Physics of Toys. This week the heroes built gravity-powered cars using household items and had a distance contest. They weighted the cars with play-doh and pennies to explore the concept of momentum. Next week, they will incorporate propulsion and compete on both distance and accuracy. It was a lot of fun!

Writer’s Workshop:

This week the heroes started on their “Pitch a Field Trip” writer’s workshop. On Tuesday they each brainstormed three ideas. Thursday they are researching their favorite idea. Over the next few weeks, they will develop their pitch and then pitch the group to vote on the leading idea. Then we will take that field trip on July 7. Ask your child what their favorite field trip idea is!

Learning to Be Badge:

The heroes are working each week towards their Katherine Johnson Badge of Gratitude by writing and delivering positive character callouts to their friends, and writing a letter of thanks to a fellow traveler. Even after they earn their badges, we will continue to do character callouts as we learn to appreciate and support our friends. We’ve noticed a huge shift in attitude towards character callouts. At first, the heroes weren’t interested in doing them. Now that we’ve had a couple of Fridays were we give and receive positive feedback from each other, they are enjoying them much more. There is a big positive shift in energy when we read and share our callouts!

Art / Music:

This session we are exploring the art of music! Christa Kowert is leading music this session. She is Director of Music at a Madison Lutheran Church. She also works frequently with children through private piano lessons and group music classes. She has experience with Montessori music. As a side note, her son, Paul Kowert, recently won a Grammy for “Best Folk Album,” Christa was his earliest teacher.

Phys Ed:

Last session the children finished off their individual goals including soccer goals, tree-climbing, running endurance and yoga inversions. This session, Kathryn plans to focus on specific skill-building and giving the heroes the group challenge of inventing a new game together. Our focus is all about collaboration, having fun, moving their bodies and exposure to fundamental skills so they would feel confident in games.

We are so excited to host the exhibition today! Some things to expect:

• A reading of science-based fiction stories
• A scavenger hunt
• Information and displays about arthropods and insects
• Live insects!
• A Socratic discussion demonstration (you will learn about SOLEs)
• Ancient technology display
• Badge ceremony
• Butterfly release

This week the children focused on exhibition planning, wrapping up their science-based fiction stories, and wrapping up their entomology quest work. We also had visitors! 

Entomologists Come to Acton!

Two entomologists from UW-Madison visited. Their names are Celeste and Victoria, and they are PhD students who study honey bees! They talked with the children about insects including types of life cycles and pollinators. Did you know that insects account for 50% of all animal biomass on Earth?? They also brought some very cool insect displays as well as live Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. They really do hiss (breath through their bodies) when they are disturbed, including picked up and handled. (Most of) the children loved handling the hissing cockroaches. And our heroes were excited to show our entomologist guests the live habitats and how well they have been taking care of their insects!

As an aside, Celeste told me she was very impressed with the children’s existing knowledge about insects. Amazing how learning by doing, as we have done in our quest, sparks curiosity and makes learning stick!

Exhibition Preparation

The children worked very hard on preparing for the exhibition. They set-up the physical displays of their work, created signs, wrote up a scavenger hunt, designed and wrote a program, and created exhibition ballots. They also decided on the threshold for earning this session’s quest badge and set it at completing 90% of the quest work. We like that they are keeping expectations high! At the same time, not every hero will earn a quest badge. But that’s ok. As they see their friends earn badges and the impact that has on Freedom Levels, we suspect they will become more focused.

Speaking of freedoms, the children also calculated their Freedom Level points and they all made it to Flying for the next session! They have worked so hard to get to that level. Ask your child how they feel about their level and what was required to get there (hint: it’s not just points).

Learning to Be – Character Callouts

We noticed that the civility in the studio began to decline during the second half of the session. On the one hand, the children were stepping up to hold their friends accountable, which we celebrate. It’s a wonderful thing to be running partners and help our friends achieve their goals, and vice versa. On the other hand, we sometimes observed some schadenfreude when friends failed. The Guides brought this observation up at Town Hall, and the heroes committed to all worked towards their first Learning to Be badge (the Katherine Johnson Badge of Gratitude). This badge asks them to write and present ten character callouts to friends and write a letter to a fellow traveler in the studio. They are learning first hand how good it feels to both give and receive positive praise.

Next Session:

We are looking forward to persuasive writing (“Pitch a Field Trip”), a field trip on the bus line, planning an end-of year party, music exploration, and Newton’s Physics of Toys quest!

Theme of the Week

This week, we are exploring heroes and their hero’s journeys. Specifically, the children learned about Malala Yousafzai, Shirley Chisholm, Steven Hawking, and Everyday Heroes! We are looking for more ways we can integrate examples of heroes into our days at Acton. One idea we have is highlighting a few heroes on the bulletin boards in fellowship hall, and rotate those every month. We are also looking for ways we can integrate discussions of heroes related to the Quest into our daily closing discussions.

Ancient Technology Mini-Quest

This week, the children spent time working towards their Civilization badges by completing the Ancient technology mini-quest. They explored ways that ancient technologies have influenced modern technologies (did you know the Romans invented the first vending machine?). Then they chose an ancient technology to research. Based on that research, they designed and built a model of that technology in the makerspace. 

Although we explored ancient engineering feats (think Roman aqueducts or Chinese grain mills), medical advancements (e.g. surgery techniques in India), and advancements in writing, shipbuilding, and textiles, military technologies seemed to capture the interest of the heroes most. We read in our Civilization texts, that military innovations like chariots, javelins, shields and iron spears are all examples of technologies that helped turn the tide between battling nations. 

Writer’s Workshop

The heroes are editing their science-based fiction stories. The Guide led an editing and punctuation game with the children. Then they worked together to edit each others’ stories. Next week they will work on illustrating and publishing!

Impromptu Visitor

As part of our school safety planning, we invited Madison Police Department to walk through our building and advise on our safety plan. The children were intrigued by Officer Dan and his bomb-sniffing canine, so Officer Dan invited the children to pet and visit with his dog, Carl. Carl was born in Czechoslovakia, “speaks” German, and is a strong sniffer! He recently helped find two elementary students who had wandered off in the heavy rain.

If you ever have questions about our safety planning, feel free to reach out! We have an extensive safety plan in place that we submit annually to the WI DOJ. We conduct monthly fire drills, 2x yearly tornado drills (we had the fire department advise us and walk through prior to opening, but the police department has been really backed up and it took five months to get them here), and we are working to design an active shooter drill that isn’t scary. Officer Dan had some great suggestions for that, and if you want to know more about how we plan to approach that, I’m happy to share. We will do that 1x / year. 

T.G.I.F. Adventure!

We had a really fun Friday this week. The children have been preparing Mother’s Day gifts over the course of the week. Ellie also had the idea of going on an adventure to purchase a small gift for each mom. The children were given a map and a budget of $20, and had to navigate their way to a local chocolate shop (`~15 minute walk) and decide on a fair distribution of the budget. They did well and we are sure you will be happy with what they brought home for you 🙂

Friday was also Friday Reward day plus a birthday celebration! We celebrated our friend with a candle and a globe 🙂 And they loved the insect documentary so much last week, that this week they watched “Meet the Robinsons” about a young inventor, which ties into our Ancient Technology theme.

Entomology Quest

The children are wrapping up their work on the Quest and beginning to prepare for the exhibition of learning! This week and next they will be developing the agenda, creating a program, determining roles, setting up their work at stations, and creating exhibition activities.

Town Hall

There was a lot to discuss at Town Hall today! We asked how we can celebrate each others’ successes! They made a change to the studio maintenance system. And they determined when it was ok to work on core skills outside of actual core skills time. Ask your child what they decided and how! (Note: town hall is a good practice of contributing solutions, but also accepting the outcomes determined by the group even if it’s not exactly what we want – like democracy in the real-world, and one of the bases of civil society).

Theme of the Week: Intentionality

We’ve been noticing distracting behaviors in the studio. For instance, a hero might sit next to another hero and begin touching them or talking to them while they are working on core skills. Or during Quest or Writer’s Workshop, heroes will choose to play instead of work, and actively draw others into their play. One tangible result this session is that the heroes have not been able to complete all their team Quest work (we will see if they pull it together for the exhibition).

So, this week, our morning launch discussions were focused on “intentionality” which means doing things on purpose, or setting a goal and choosing to take actions towards that goal. The heroes brainstormed ways that they can create the conditions for intentionality, like having a core skills plan, sitting apart from each other during individual work time, and choosing to work (e.g. write or revise during writer’s workshop), and not distract others. We also talked about when and where intentionality is important (launch, core skills, quest, WW, makerspace, closing) and where it is less important (free time, lunch, outdoor time, Friday reward time).

Some questions to ask your hero:

• Do you find it harder to be intentional when you are tired, or when you are super-energized/excited?
• What did you do yesterday that impacted you today? (e.g. enough sleep? food? water?)
• What’s your core skills plan at school? Are you sticking to it? Why or why not?
• What is one badge you are close to completing? What do you need to do over the next few weeks to get it over the finish line?
• When you are feeling distracted, what are some ways you can get yourself to focus again? (e.g. take a movement break? eat a snack? take deep breaths?)

Town Hall
Interestingly, the guides weren’t the only ones noticing the distracting behaviors.

A hero submitted a suggestion for a system to address “not participating and distracting others” for Friday’s Town Hall discussion. The heroes landed on the idea of giving the distracting hero a warning and if the distracting hero continues the distracting behavior, he or she will spend 10 minutes at the reset table to re-focus and come back to work.

We will see how that goes next week! 

D.E.A.R.

The heroes have been asking for more D.E.A.R. which is very cool. This week we saw heroes using their free time to read books (especially Dog Man). We love seeing this because it means we really are fulfilling our promise to create an environment where children will develop a love of reading. It is happening!

Quest

The heroes researched and designed a butterfly garden this week. They were so into it! The first challenge was to agree to a design they liked. They found designs online. Rather than vote on a design, they took extra time to make sure that every hero was excited about the design. Next, they researched what flowers attract butterflies and each chose two they liked. Next, they drew, colored and labeled their butterfly garden. The heroes demonstrated strong teamwork and enthusiasm through this project and it was impressive to see them navigate ways to work together towards a goal. This is an area of growth!
The children also conducted a field study to learn about insects and other arthropods that live in Wisconsin and in our backyard! The goal was for each of them to catch an interesting insect and to research it using UW’s WI insect identification database. 

Initially, they measured an area in a sunny, grassy spot outside the school. After not finding any insects, they decided it could be more fruitful to look under rocks and other dark spots. They brought their arthropods (are earthworms an arthropod? ask your hero) back to the studio and worked to identify them. We learned that one was a blister beetle that we should NOT handle. Another hero decided to keep his millipedes as pets and researched what they need for a habitat and food and is now caring for his “pet” millipedes at home 🙂

Civilization

This session we created civilization badge which includes a mini-quest to research, design and build an ancient technology. The heroes helped brainstorm what questions were needed to fully research a technology, including “what civilization/people invented or used it?” “what does the technology do?” and “why was it important to that civilization?” Next week, they will complete their research, draw a design and figure out what materials are needed to build a model in the makerspace.

Art

The heroes continued work on their symmetry exploration through butterfly art! Next week, they will paint and finish up their work in preparation for the exhibition.

Writer’s Workshop
This week the focus was revising and peer critiques. The children used the A.R.M.S. framework for making changes (Add, Remove, Move, Substitute) and practiced giving each other warm, cool, warm feedback on each other’s work.

Ending the Week on a High Note

The heroes told me that this week’s Friday reward was the “best ever!” We had a pajama and stuffie day, then got out the bean bags and popcorn at the end of the day, and settled in to watch Microcosmos, a 1996 award-winning documentary on the life of insects. To top it all off, one of the butterflies emerged from its chrysalis, so we made sure it had plenty of fruit and nectar to eat over the weekend while the other emerge before we release them on Monday.

We kicked off the week with a birthday celebration! One of our heroes turned nine this week. We had a celebration borrowed from Montessori where she circled around the “sun” nine times, and after each revolution, her mom and sister shared a milestone from that year. It was such a nice way to honor her! After that, the children continued the celebration by making slime in the makerspace.

On Friday, one of our friends brought in baby chicks! The children spent their free time before school holding and petting the chicks. We also brought in board games for the Friday mystery reward, which was a lot of fun.

Socratic Discussions

The heroes are doing so well these days with Socratic discussions! They are building the habits of agreeing or disagreeing with the point previously made, building on that point, and using evidence and examples to back up their assertions, all while keeping an open- and changeable mind. It’s incredible and will only continue to get better.

Quest

This week the children continued their exploration of entomology and continued setting up insect habitats. This week they set up the mealworm habitats. Did you know mealworms are beetle larvae? At some point, the mealworms will hatch into beetles! It could take weeks or months, depending on the temperature. They are also closely watching the caterpillars which began forming chrysalides this week. In a few days, the children will  be able to transfer them to the butterfly habitat where eventually the butterflies will emerge. 

One theme during Quest this session has been the importance of reading instructions! Instructions provide a roadmap for our activities, and they help us plan in advance, especially as a team. They are also especially important to read and understand in order to keep our insects alive and thriving. Ask your hero(es) about the pop quiz they took this week!

Writer’s Workshop

The older heroes are making progress on their handwritten science-based fiction drafts. We spent our launches discussing idea development and rated a Magic School Bus story on the sub-traits of idea development. We explored what it means to “show” vs. “tell” in our writing. First we listened to an example of Roald Dahl describe a dirty beard in his book, The Twits. Then we played a game where one hero pulled an emotion on a slip of paper and had to act it out. Rather than guess the emotion, the other heroes wrote what they saw the acting hero do. For instance, “he scrunched up his body and made himself small. He brought his hands to his face and looked down. He was shaking a little.” That’s right, our hero was nervous!

Our younger heroes are not always as enthusiastic about free-writing, so this week they worked on their handwriting in their handwriting workbooks where they have the opportunity to write and illustrate silly sentences and play word games. 

The expectations for earning a writing badge are different for all the heroes depending on the level where they are working. Some need to complete all the steps (pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing) in five writers’ workshops. Others need to complete all the steps in three writers’ workshops. The youngest children aren’t required to complete any yet, but we ask that they participate in discussions, do their best, and do meaningful work during the workshop time (they have other requirements for their badges – ask your hero what they are!).

Cursive Writing

A couple of our older heroes requested to learn cursive. They struggle to read cursive writing and thought it would be a useful skill, so we found some great cursive workbooks for them to get started with on their own. That’s what independent and lifelong learning is about: asking ourselves, what do I want to learn? And then gathering the resources to learn it.

Delegation

We set up a “delegation slider” in the studio this week so that we all can visualize what activities in the studio are the responsibility of the guides, and what are the responsibilities of the heroes. Over the past couple of weeks, heroes have been taking more responsibility over keeping each other accountable for participating and upholding the “rules of engagement” in discussions by assigning each other points for each discussion. They are also checking each other’s work in studio maintenance and determining when the work is complete and up to standard. They also have opportunities to keep discussion notes on the whiteboards and read stories to each other during some launches and landings (our end of day gathering).

Art

We learned about symmetry in art, and will spend the next few weeks creating symmetrical insect paintings. The heroes seemed to really enjoy this activity and we’re looking forward to using black acrylic glue next week…..

Phys. Ed.

Each hero set a personal PE goal for themselves this week and started working towards their goals on Thursday. Goals include getting better at kicking a soccer goal, getting better at handstands, getting more fit by running, and climbing a tree by themselves! We found another nearby park with soccer goals and climbing trees which seems to be a nice spot for working on their goals and exploring the neighborhood. We are fortunate to be surrounded by so many green spaces!

The Guides have been having one-on-one meetings with each hero to go through each app and detail exactly where they are, and what they need to accomplish towards their badge plans. This process was an eye-opener for some in seeing that they will need to work with more intentionality to make progress, and that sometimes they need to push through challenges on the apps rather than start on another when the material gets tough. It was also an opportunity for each hero to set their own weekly work plan which they are vested in.

In our core skills launches this week, the heroes have also been exploring the ideas of rights, privileges and responsibilities. The heroes are learning that privileges, like being at Acton, come with certain responsibilities, including respecting the promises they made to each other at the beginning of the school year (in their contract of promises).

Each week our Guide will introduce a new Montessori challenge for the younger heroes. This week it was sandpaper letters and greenboards.

Entomology Quest

The heroes continued in their roles as entomologists this week. They explored questions like: what is an arthropod? and what is an insect? Using what they learned, they designed and built  “super bugs” in the makerspace. 

We welcomed new guests to the studio this week: ants! The children are setting up insect habitats and this week set up two large ant farms. The heroes are responsible for the care of their ants and will keep a daily observation journal for each habitat. It was fun to see how much progress the ants made on their tunnels in just 24 hours!

The heroes also began running mini-experiments to learn more about the ants. For instance, what do the ants like to eat? Do they prefer an apple or a dead bug? The heroes hunted for insects outside and found a recently dead bee. The ants swarmed it and immediately brought it into their tunnels. We learned our harvester ants prefer bugs over apples! 

We’re also learning about ants’ social behavior. We watched a couple snippets of this documentary. If you want to watch more at home, it’s fascinating!

Writer’s Workshop
We continue our exploration of fact-based fiction this week. Last week, heroes completed their topic research. This week, they worked on idea development by creating, sharing and critiquing each others’ story spines. Their challenge is to write a fiction story that also incorporates ten facts they learned about their topic through their research. There are stories about hedge hogs in space, caterpillars that tour the world, blob fish and killer hippos. We can’t wait to learn how they all end! 

Civilization  / STEAM
This week the heroes completed their canopic jars and used them to “mummify” apples using “natron” mixtures of vinegar, baking soda, salt and sugar. The results surprised us! Ask your hero what happened and how they might design the experiment differently next time to isolate results.

Phys Ed We are so fortunate to have Kathryn on board as she is making fitness really fun while integrating health concepts and tying Phys Ed into other parts of what we are learning. 

This week, heroes learned about heart rates, and why they increase when the heart works harder. They learned that fitness is about heart health, strength, endurance and flexibility. They learned that people in ancient civilizations trained/participated in “sport” to be prepared for battle/war. They crawled low and covered their buddies. They also learned about body systems (proprioceptive, vestibular, muscular, vision) by “feeling them” with jumping, hopping, skipping, rolling, spinning, doing somersaults, balancing, carrying each other short distances, sit-ups, and walking with eyes closed. Each hero was invited to pick a system they want to work on, and to start thinking about a fitness S.M.A.R.T. goal they want to work on for the next several weeks. 

Finally, they collaborated to play a game together that increased their heart rates and that everyone participated in. The latter can be challenging, and the heroes are learning to negotiate rules that work for all!

Next week we are excited for our first birthday celebration!!

With the warmer weather, the children have been opting to play in the creek in Nakoma Park. We recommend wearing to school or sending some water shoes (water shoes or water-resistant sandals) for outdoor time. They also are enjoying climbing on the playground equipment!

Back to School!

The heroes did a great job of setting back into routines after this break. The Guides were impressed with how smoothly it went!

At the end of each day, a hero shared a photo from their Spring Break and presented to the group about their time off. They also updated their 1000 Hours Outside tracker. One hero added 40 hours after much hiking in Southern Utah!

Core Skills

They are in the rhythm of core skills, which is great! This week and next week, the Guides are meeting with each hero to discuss exactly where they are in their badge plan and apps, and set goals for the next two sessions. We will send these goal sheets home to parents. We feel like this could be an eye-opener for our older learners and shed some light on work habits and overarching goals. We are also working with our older learners to start utilizing Journey Tracker (ask them to bring their logins home and walk you through their badge plan!) to track their progress.

One balance we are working to strike is between working towards points and badges and ensuring that they also enjoy learning. Ultimately, what matters is that they are doing meaningful work. If they are, the points and badges will take care of themselves.

At the same time, we notice some of them jumping around from app to app, or choosing the same task they have mastered over and over again, to avoid doing hard things. So we think that these detailed goal meetings will help them develop 1) a vision for what they want to accomplish, and 2) a roadmap for accomplishing it, even if it means they have to pass through some challenging trials along the way!

Volunteering Activity

The church where we are housed holds a large rummage sale each year to raise money for local charities. The children opted to use their Friday Reward time this week to volunteer to help set up the rummage sale. They got to set-up the kids / toys area and were awarded a V.I.P. early shopping experience. They were thrilled 🙂

Athletics / Phys. Ed.

We felt like we needed to up our game in the Phys Ed department, so we’ve enlisted the help of Kathryn Kraft this session. Let’s just say today’s PE session was a success! The children had a lot of fun. They also learned about resting and non-resting heart-rates, and role-played children in ancient civilizations who didn’t have access to today’s soccer balls or playground equipment. How did they keep from being bored 5000 years ago? Over the next six weeks their goal is to collaboratively come up with a game they can play that utilizes no modern equipment. It’s a great exercise in collaboration and creating structure for themselves and ties in with our studies of Ancient Civilizations!

Here is Kathryn’s bio:
Kathryn Kraft is a pediatric physical therapist with a passion for connecting youth to the world of health and wellness through exploration and excitement.  She has personal experience guiding soldiers on their fitness journey as a Captain in the WI Army National Guard, as well as discovering her own physical capabilities as a previous member of the UW Women’s Hockey team and USA Women’s Bandy team.  After working in public schools for the last 7 years, Kathryn sees the importance of sparking interest in movement before teaching specific skills and aims to uncover the goals and aspirations of Acton’s heroes on their physical education journey. She is also mother to one of our heroes joining the Spark studio in the Fall.

We are grateful to have Kathryn join our team!

STEAM / Art

As we study ancient civilizations, it’s impossible not to keep coming back to Egypt. This week and next we are learning about the Middle and New Kingdom’s of Egypt. The heroes requested that we mummify something, so this week we made canopic jars using modeling clay, pringles containers and paints. Canopic jars were used to hold and preserve the organs of mummified humans. After the jars are complete, we will “mummify” apples inside the jars and test and observe how well different preserving agents work over several days (e.g. salt, sugar, baking soda, vinegar).

Entomology Quest!

Bugs! We are learning about arthropods including insects, arachnids and scorpions. This week was challenging because we dove straight into taxonomy and classification. There was some resistance and struggle, but much joy when we heard the words, “I think I’m getting this now!” 

The other challenge about this Quest overall is that the heroes are working as a team. They learned that it can be a good idea to read all the instructions before diving into a project 🙂 They are also struggling with how to organize themselves when their teammates skills and motivation are varied. The Guides will use launch times to equip them with the skills they need to work collaboratively.

We expect the next few weeks to be more accessible for all. We’ll be building “super bugs,” building habitats and raising insects, designing butterfly gardens, and conducting field studies in the park and on school grounds.

Writer’s Workshop

The genre this session is science-based fiction! This week, the heroes are learning research best-practices as they research their topic of interest and develop a list of facts that they will weave into an illustrated fiction story. Ask your child what topic they chose!

Badge Celebration:

We had our first badge celebration this week! Each hero earned a Business Fair Badge. Every Friday we will hold a badge ceremony to celebrate heroes who earn a badge that week! The Guides created a badge wall where the children will be able to display their badges as they earn them!

D.E.A.R.

At this week’s Town Hall meeting, the children requested that during drop everything and read (D.E.A.R.) time that they have the opportunity to read aloud to each other. We love this idea for improving both fluency for the reader, and vocabulary for the listener. So the children started what we are calling “collaborative D.E.A.R.” on Thursdays. Book buddies would have been a catchier name 🙂

Spring is in the Air:

The children have been spending lunches outside and enjoying the outdoors. They are determined to climb the tree outside our building and have been giving each others boosts to help. We love the teamwork!

In honor of the changing weather, we made barometers out of jars, balloons and straws, and learned about how air pressure changes as weather changes. We will be tracking air pressure with our barometers!

Memoirs:

The heroes published their memoirs this week! This was a huge area of growth this session as the children went from struggling with writer’s block during the first week to publishing a booklet of memoirs. Ask your child to share theirs with you!

Civilization:

This week we learned about Assyria, India and China and read myths from each culture! Next session we will be exploring STEM challenges related to ancient civilizations (think mummification and Roman aqueducts).

Special Visitor:

This week we had a special visitor named Sumeyra come and visit! She led a STEM project (the walking rainbow) and shared her hero story with us. Sumeyra was born in Germany and lived in Turkey. She has traveled to 24 countries and taught in a remote part of Turkey (it took her two hours to get to the schoolhouse every day on rough, dirt roads. She had to tend to the fire in the school house, and the children didn’t have boots or books). How grateful we are for all we have! The children enjoyed learning about her life and her adventures and even spoke Turkish with her through Google translate 🙂

Failure & Success:

We have seen huge growth this past session in understanding that our actions and decisions have consequences. This runs the gamut from arriving to launches and discussions on time and prepared to tracking our points for core skills. At times, this has been rough and every hero has felt successes and failures. We celebrate both! 

The Guides worked a lot this past session to put systems in place where there are both rewards and consequences, so that we can get out of the way and let the learners learn from their mistakes and take responsibility for their learning. Here are some successes and failures and lessons learned:

• Making it to our freedom level goal!
• Not making it to our freedom level goal, but accepting that and strategizing around what we have to do to make it next time
• Not arriving to launch “on time and prepared” and therefore earning an “X”
• Learning that mopping is actually quite fun!
• Bouncing back from the X and earning a “check” next time!
• Earning Friday Reward which is a blast!
• Sinking into a great book that we are excited to read
• Reflecting on the accomplishment of building a business and earning a real profit. The heroes all agreed the best part was having fun!
• Feeling the pride of reading our completed memoirs aloud to our friends
• Feeling the failure of not having finished memoirs when our friends did, not liking that feeling, and committing to focusing better during Writer’s Workshop next session
• Losing our memoirs work in a disorganized desk and learning that maybe there is value to using an organizational system afterall 🙂
• Embracing that we have more agency and control over the trajectory of our learning than we understood before

Next session, the Guides have more plans to make core skills goals and progress even more explicit to the learners, to help them better understand where they are, and where they are heading in their badge plans. We’ll continue to explore 360 feedback and personal goals. And we will continue to look for ways to delegate more responsibility to the learners. They are doing a great job and we’re really excited about how they are ALL becoming culture carriers of the Acton culture.

Looking Ahead to Session Three:

Entomology! The next Quest is all about bugs! We will continue to explore ancient civilizations including Africa, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria and Greece! We will explore science-based fiction writing. The outdoor challenge will continue! We have visual art projects and STEM challenges planned and are exploring fun PE activities. And we will have lots of Friday mystery rewards and outdoor exploration now that the weather is warming up. See you after Spring Break!