Songwriting, State Snacks and Sing-along

This week, students were wrapping up their state posters, which included labeling maps, writing paragraphs, and drawing state flags or birds.

The end result is a colorful and educational displauy in our hallway. In the new year, students will have a chance to explore one another’s work.

In addition students researched products from their state. They created a symbol for each crop grown, animal raised, or item manufactured, mined or fished to create an ‘economy quilt’ for their state.

So many state snacks came in this week! There was such a great variety of things for them to try. Charlotte shared homemade Benne wafers from SC with hummus and pimiento cheese, while Anika brought Hershey’s Kiss cookies for her state of Pennsylvania. Aurora shared popcorn for Illinois, and Nelson brought crab dip and crackers for Alaska. Oliver brought in King’s Hawai’ian rolls for, you guessed it, Hawai’i, and Mason baked New Orleans-style bread pudding for Louisiana.

Later in the week, we tasted crab cake balls for Maryland that Christian and his dad made, and Isla brought Key lime pie for Florida. Cooper brought in heart-shaped berry tarts for Oregon. Ellie’s family made Nebraska coffee cake, and Charlie brought in prickly pear-flavored popcorn for Arizona. Finally, Roger made a yummy Texas sheet cake, and Will brought in biscuits with chocolate gravy for his state of Arkansas. Phew! Thank you to all our parents who made this possible by shopping, ordering, baking, slicing and more.

The highlight of the week was the trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Students were split into four groups for docent-led tours of the collection, including the special exhibit about Dolly Parton. They had a chance to see costumes, lyrics, instruments, cars and so much more belonging to pioneers of country music, as well as today’s stars.

The trip concluded with the songwriting session. Our volunteer songwriters were a husband-wife team originally from Florida, Giselle and Erik. They read through 36 sets of lyrics we submitted, and chose six to set to music. It was so exciting for the students to hear one another’s work and for those six students to share about their inspiration for their songs. Congrats to Cooper, Penny, and Amelia in 4E and Charlie, Mara, and Silas in 4M.

In language arts, we reviewed our spelling-vocabulary words, took at test, and read another chapter in Three Times Lucky.

We also celebrated Elliot’s 10th birthday this week.

As is our tradition, the Lower and Middle School students gathered on our last day together for a Holiday Sing-along. Filled with dancing, singing, and games, the morning was a festive way to conclude our semester together.

Once we returned to the classroom, we enjoyed games of Pictionary with holiday song titles, holiday MadLibs, and delicious treats provided by our parents.