Beets & Blinks at MCS

The second session of Monkton Central's ELP started this week. We are overjoyed to offer two workshops again this session with one geared for our K-2 ELPers and one for our 3-6 crowd. We are also very proud that we are fully staffed by members of our teaching team. As our visitor Superintendent Vilaseca said today during his impromptu visit, it is so wonderful when teachers are able to work in this different context with students they might not normally work with. It also builds and maintains these all-important teaching and learning relationships.

It's a beautiful thing.

Our older students are participating in an eTextiles Craft Club. What does that mean? Well, it's a mix of traditional crafts like sewing with a modern, maker twist. Workshop teacher teammates Caitlin Leggett, who is our Kindergarten teacher, and Kelly Pierpont, who teaches 5th and 6th grade, have joined up to bridge the old and the new. This week, crafter Ms. Leggett is teaching the students sewing basics. They began with a felt bracelet, decked out with buttons and felt cutouts. Super fun to wear and share! Next week, makerspace guru Ms. Pierpont will show the students how they can use conductive thread to wire their creations with a simple LED circuit so that they light up! The students will combine these two seemingly divergent fields into such fun projects as light-up stuffed animals and other blinking craft creations!

Down the hall, Stacy Carter and Jenn Livingston, two of our 1st and 2nd grade teachers, have a crew of twenty-two 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old sous chefs in their wildly popular Good Eats cooking workshop. This week, the little ones learned safe knife skills in order to make carrot, beet, apple, and ginger juice and fruit kebabs with a delightful cinnamon-honey yogurt sauce. "This is better than pizza!" exclaimed first grader Kaidin.

Thanks to the students, families, and teachers who are making expanded learning possible for Monkton's students! Stay tuned for more pictures and news next week!

~Kate Gagner, Site Director