Monday, October 15, 2012

A Brand New School Year


Where have these last 7 weeks gone?? Seriously, I feel like it was just yesterday we were watching the kids walk through the door, back from summer break. Since the last blog post (back in April... I feel like such a slacker!) CLC has been quite busy and I have lots of stuff to share.  For today, I will just share with you two all-school team building activities we started the year with.   

Our annual Friday Challenge takes place on the first Friday of the school year.  All the kids are divided up into teams that will then rotate through several activities, all led by our trusty group of teachers.  This is a great way for the kids to get acquainted with each other and to start learning how to work as a team. We are big on team building here.  Here are some fun pictures from the day!

Launching a rocket

Egg obstacle course

Playing hand ball

Trying to get the ping pong ball across the cups

The second all-school activity was the Bridge Building Competition. Each 5th/6th grade classroom teamed up with a 7th/8th grade classroom.  Teams of two (or three) were then formed within these groupings.  Each team was given 1 box of spaghetti, 1 hot glue gun, and 5 glue sticks with which to create the world's strongest pasta bridge!

Their task: build a bridge that will support the most weight as compared to its mass.

The day of the competition was a whirlwind of excitement and anticipation.  The big room was set up to project images of the teams on the walls as they completed their bridge weighing task.  Two weighing stations were set up on either side of the stage with one big screen in the middle projecting the team names and their statistics.  As bridges collapsed you'd hear a collective gasp from the audience.  If the bridge held the bucket of rice without collapsing the audience would burst out in cheers.

Pasta Bridges

More pasta bridges
Preparing the bridge
A diagram of what happened on the stage


A good shot of the image projected behind the team

Now all of the teams are well into their first projects as individual classes. We've had CSI teams combing the school for evidence in a string of thefts; hot air balloon building; a class trying to convince people to change their behaviors for the good of the Earth; and another doing a marketing project.  

During all of this we've started our Fall block of specials, coffee houses, fundraisers, and super cool after school clubs.  But, I'll save those stories for another time....