We headed into the studio at United Action for Youth over winter break. We were thrilled and surprised that almost all of our students were available to record!
Prairie Green School was invited to record "Robot Song" which will be featured on a cd compilation called "For Kids By Kids." Half of the songs are written by local artists including Pieta Brown, Dave Moore, and the Awful Purdies. The other half are written and performed by local young musicians. This cd will be distributed for free throughout Mission Creek Festival. We headed into the studio at United Action for Youth over winter break. We were thrilled and surprised that almost all of our students were available to record! Here we are stretching and warming up our voices. Pappy joined us to lay down some bass ukulele on our recording. You may be thinking, "What's a Pappy?" Pappy is our dear friend, Craig Klocke, who volunteers at the school. We got to work with Stu Mullins at UAY. Here he is setting up the microphones. We learned how to sing into a microphone. We started by recording the song all together. The kids did a great job! A sneak peek of our studio time. We recorded "Robot Song" four times which gave us a sense of what a studio musician does. Despite all the repetition, the kids sang and played with energy during each take. Lucy rocked the harmonica! Pappy handed her one earlier that morning and she ended up playing it on the recording. After recording, we piled into the sound room and took a listen. We needed to decide which of the four takes sounded the best. Overdubs! Some of our preschoolers listened back in the headphones and sang along to record another layer to our song. One final listen! Our youngest students were ready to play. :) We left Stu with the work of mixing the song. "Robot Song" after the mixing. Listen close for the added comments at the end - "Is it on the cd yet?" "Can we do it again?" We hope this is the first of many studio sessions.
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At PGS, we try and limit the amount of sugar our kids consume. Therefore, to celebrate birthdays, we focus on other ways to celebrate. Friday, we celebrated Lucy and Henry's birthdays with bread bowls & chili followed by a fruit plate! I love that there is always a singing of Happy Birthday in Spanish! Here are PGS's students singing to Kobi in October! On Halloween, the hallways are filled with costumed students. Everything from an old lady to a cup of hot chocolate to Long John Silver paraded for all to see. A very good parent volunteered to come help. We all made our own light up ghosts complete with their own features and details. Check out our photos below! After our craft, we divided into teams and played some fun games. Ghost Bowling Bozo Buckets Stack the pumpkins Cauldron Drop
In Polymath Academy, we learned about Coat of Arms. We were intrigued and wanted to create one for Prairie Green School. Here is what we came up with. The eagle signifies STRENGTH, BRAVERY, BEING ALERT AND CLEVER. The apple signifies LOVE AND PEACE. The duck signifies RESOURCEFULNESS--it can escape in four different ways: swimming, diving, running and flying. We are people who look for multiple ways to solve a problem. Green means FREEDOM, BEAUTY, JOY, HEALTH AND HOPE. White/silver/gray means WISDOM, INNOCENCE, PEACE AND JOY. Gold means WISDOM, VIRTUE AND RESPECT. Here are the coats of arms completed by B.J., Caroline, Jay and Claire. For Christmas, Prairie Green Students are writing creative stories for other classmates. First, students drew names out of a cup for the person they have to write to. Second, students thought of their characters, setting, and plot. Then, the students planned their stories by writing outlines. Next, they write rough drafts.
By B.J.
On Thursday Laura Wolf came in cooked some sweet potato chips and also cooked fingerling potato's from our garden. With a little bit of salt they were really tasty!. Everybody enjoyed them and in this case Claire liked to serve them. It also happened to be Kobi's birthday the day before so it was kind of birthday treat. By Lucy Westemeyer
On Wednesday October 8, there was a Blood Moon. The Moon appears orange or red, the result of sunlight scattering off our atmosphere, hence the name Blood Moon. The next expected blood moon is on April 5, 2015. This total Lunar Eclipse was active in Iowa CIty from 5:24-6:24 AM. Some of the Prairie Green School students woke up to see the lunar eclipse... did you? On Monday, Prairie Green Elementary students looked through a bowl of brown mud that contained sticks, plants, sand, and (who knew?) animals and bugs. Kate Sulentic got the mud from pond close by and brought it to the school so the students could enjoy the fun at school. If you took a look at the mud you might think, "Ha! How could an animals or bugs live in here?" The students found seventeen snail shells, three small shrimp-like creatures, two tiny brown-pink worms, one gray shrimp-like creature, and one water beetle in an hour. Devon picked up the animals along the way and dropped them in an ice cube tray and looked at the creatures under a magnify glass with the preschoolers. Prairie Green students recorded the results in their Ecology notebooks and sketched the animals they found.
Written by B.J. Wolf
On Friday, Judd came in and drew goldfinches with us. As we were drawing, he taught us how some birds fly. A falcon dives almost vertical. A goldfinch flaps hard and stops then falls briefly until he flaps again hard. Finally the puffin (who spends 90% of their life on the water) eats so much he tries to run on the water to get lift off but is too heavy and has to wait until he digests his food to be able to fly. Judd also talked to the class about suffixes and prefixes and that if the word already has -s sounding on the end and its more than one you have to add an -es instead of another -s. Written by Luca On Monday morning the Prairie Green students put down their math homework and got on board the bus for the long anticipated ecology field trip. They grabbed their field notebooks, backpacks, and pencil cases, and waited for the bus to finish it's drive over the long gravel road. As soon as they got there, they ran down to what they call Pagoda Pond. Students stayed there and studied for a while, and when they finished, they rushed to Lower Pond 1 and 2 (also their names for them). They collected plants and animals to sketch. They stayed outside the whole day observing life. At the end of the day they returned with pages of their notebooks filled with notes, vocabulary, and sketches of organisms.
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