The Museum of Betterment

Two weeks ago, our school was transformed! It was time for our annual museum. This year the theme was The Museum of Betterment- things or people that helped make the world a better place.  We saw everything from Dr Seuss, to the Olympics, to Ancient Civilizations, to a green energy power plant, and several charities. Each of the four classrooms transformed into their specific topic within the broad topic of betterment.

Team M/R: This room was full of diverse topics.  Aviation, Operation Smile, Adopt a Pet, the Olympics, etc.  Here are some fun pictures from that museum!

Team SBoogle: These students created a green energy super-facility. The class gave tours of their energy plant- they even wore hard hats to make it more realistic!

Team M/K: This class took us way back in time to Ancient civilizations.  Their students got really into it dressing up like Vikings, Cleopatra, Native American Indians, even security guards.

Team A/A: All the students in this team created fundraising events and food to sell. The funds raised from the sales would go to their charities.  Visitors were given an imaginary amount of $200 to spend supporting charities of their choice, chosen after they listened to each charity's spokesperson.  

Our museum got a nice write up in the Centre County Gazette...hopefully, next year we'll get some more press! This museum is always open to the public and we love having visitors come see our school, especially when our students transform it into something as cool as this!

Wrapping up 2013

And suddenly it's December 21...winter break has started.  I think my New Year's Resolution is going to be to write at least one CLC blog a month so I don't get so far behind! There are too many cool things happening here to let that happen!

Here is a quick rundown of what's happened since the last blog:

*StuCo (student council) held several school spirit days.  One of them was beach day. We turned the big room into a beach oasis! Students ate their lunch on beach towels, wore silly sunglasses, and tossed beach balls around.

* We took a group of kids to Harner Farm for hayride, pumpkin picking, and the corn maze

*Team Sboogle got Lost! in South America. Teams were "dropped off in different parts of S. America and they had to find their way to Lima, Peru. When the group makes it to the city they will have to learn how to communicate with the people of the city...in their native language of Spanish!  Each group filmed episodes of their South American adventure. I got to play the part of a guard chasing after thieves in one group's video, I was awesome.

*Team M/K and A/A went to Discovery Space. That place is super fun! There are two different sides; one is health related and the other is science/technology/music.  I got to tag along on this field trip!

Well, that was the quick end-of-2013 wrap up!  Wishing you Happy Holidays and great 2014!

Another school year in full swing

Tomorrow is the last day of October.  We have been in school for 2 full months now.  It's the end of the first quarter and, in three weeks, the end of the first specials block.  I have to say, the beginning of the school year has been a blur! So much has happened here that I may have to do two posts to catch you up.

We started off the year with our usual Friday Challenges. This is a great way for our new and returning students to get to know each other. The whole school gets split into teams and they rotate through team challenges.  That was followed by the All School Building Challenge. This year's challenge was to build a structure out of pasta and mini marshmallows. It proved to be very challenging as the kids had to work with a budget.  They found out very quickly how hard it is to stick to a budget...and that things can happen to make you blow your budget!  The kids moaned and groaned a lot and I found myself repeating "welcome to the real world!" :-)

Once we got settled into the school year, the individual classrooms began their own projects. Sboogle learned about Native American culture and created archaeological digs. They used the artifacts they dug up to identify the specific Native American culture those artifacts belonged to.

Team A/A learned about plants, pollinators, and PA history.  The field trip below was to a butterfly garden in Tudek park.  I got to go along on this one!

Team M/K began working on their weather project. They watched Storm Chasers and I even saw them doing some activities outside that had them simulating tornadoes.  At least that's what it looked like from my view! Their students are in training to become weather experts and, eventually, storm chasers.

Team M/R continued with the "building with pasta" theme.  Their class built skyscraper models out of pasta and glue sticks.  These buildings had to have a structure on top to place an egg in. In addition, they had to be built strong enough to withstand the earthquake shake table!  The tallest tower came in at just under 9 ft tall...and almost all of the towers stayed intact during the "earthquake".  We have quite a classroom of architects!

Building a tower

The almost-9ft building

Placing the egg on top ever so gently!

To be continued....

And another year flies by....

It's hard to believe that the school year has almost come to an end.  We've been busy doing EYOP's (end of the year projects) and taking field trips. Part of today was spent cleaning out lockers.  Oy! You should have seen the stuff coming out of these lockers!  Anyway, I thought I'd catch you up to speed on some of the fun things we've done here at CLC to finish out the year.

Team M/R: No-weld recumbent bike building.  They basically take apart bikes and piece them back together as recumbent bikes. Pretty cool!

 CLC Circus: We had a lot of circus-type things happening during ESP for a few months so it was only natural that the kids wanted to have a circus to show off their new talents!  There was juggling, hula hooping (and not just ordinary hula hooping either...swing-your-leg-through-the-hoop-then-over-your-neck kinda stuff!), unicyclists, and acrobatics! It was quite a show, these kids are SO talented!

Entering the "ring"!

Student Representative Voting: The students had to vote for a teacher to represent them on the CLC Board.  Siobhan and Deb were the candidates and they each put on a great campaign! In then end, Siobhan took home the title of Student Representative by only a few votes.

Deb and her campaign manager

Private voting booths

Showing off their "I Voted" stickers

In addition to all these fun things we took an all school field trip to the Duquesne Incline and Pittsburgh Zoo, finished up our Specials classes with a rockin' assembly (all our rock bands performed!), and watched the 8th graders graduate.

It's been a great year at CLC! Next year we have some BIG changes coming.  The school is going to go under some big renovations, we can't wait to get it started! Be on the look out for blogs documenting the renovation process!

Have a wonderful summer everyone!

Tumblewood Challenge

This week we started the writing PSSA's. Yes, it's already that time of year again.  While the 5th and 8th graders were hard at work writing their little hearts out, the 6th and 7th graders got to work on a project together.  This year, Morgan organized a challenge...the Tumblewood Challenge to be exact.

The challenge: Build a structure using only balsa wood and wood glue (and a few other tools to cut/trace). This structure will then be sent rolling down a ramp to see how far it will roll. Then, the ultimate challenge! Weights will be added to the structure, little by little, to see how much weight it will hold.  

Do you know how much weight a small, round balsa wood structure will hold?  I bet you Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bar that your guess would be less than what our Tumblewood Champions structure held.  Keep reading to find out the winning weight....

The balsa structure is under all those weights!

Rolling a structure down the ramp

Too nervous to watch! Notice the structure bowing under the pressure

It's very nerve wrecking!

Brian getting the best angle
 

Anticipating the next weight

And finally....the structure that held the most weight.....

330 POUNDS!!! What??! Did you guess anything close to that? You should have heard the cheering in the room, surprised us all that it would hold that much!