Monkton Session 1 News

We are off to a small but mighty start at Monkton!

Once again, we welcomed Grace Freeman for a movement, music, and poetry workshop where kids are learning songs, making instruments, and even doing a little science... or is it magic?! Grace is always such a lively addition to our program and we are glad to have her here once again.

MCS first- and second-grade teacher Caitlin Gadhue has been leading a group of future writers through an author study of Eric Carle. The students have been reading Carle's books and studying the craft of picture book writing and illustration. They are such experts that they are now writing their own books!

Megan Mitchell, MCS's math interventionist, is managing a bustling Scholar's Club in the Library. Students are using it as a quiet time to get assignments done with adult help or on their own. Parents are loving the removal of nightly homework debates and kids are learning the value of time management. We are also glad to have partnered with the school's on-site Mary Johnson childcare program to give MASP kiddos a crack at Scholar's Club as well. Many of them are taking advantage of the quiet time to get work done before heading outside to play.

With just a couple weeks left, we are piecing together an awesome second session, to begin November 15th and end on December 22nd. Right now, we have two crafty offerings, Japanese, and a couple more surprises so stay tuned!

More Reasons to Love ELP During Week 3 in Monkton

Making new friends is a huge part of ELP!

Summertime is definitely meant for teachers and students to rest and recharge, but the educators and learners at ELP are keeping their heads in the game with out-of-the-ordinary ways to keep kids engaged and connected during the break. For many kids, ELP is a way to keep up with friends when seeing them every day gets a little trickier without having school and transportation to be the link. We are so happy to see friendships being forged and maintained thanks to the ANESU expanded learning program! Likewise, teachers are getting to work with different and varied age groups than they are used to and also have the perfect platform to try new things and sharpen their own professional games in a more informal and flexible learning environment than the regular school year can often provide.

Making wellness posters about healthy bodies also grows healthy minds!

We've had a great couple weeks in Wellness thanks to Mr. Hall. While the focus remains on getting kids active and using healthy fuel, we did have a chance to reflect as a group on other realms of wellness. The kiddos thought that treating other people well and refraining from becoming angry were very important...impressive thoughtfulness from elementary-aged students! Students worked with myplate.gov to dive into how many daily choices to make within each category of food and made some awesome posters to remind us all what and how much to eat for a healthy lifestyle. Of course, we played a lot of great games, went for walks to the pond, and moved a lot! We began to talk about stretching and breathing as we gear up for next week's yoga unit. We also began replicating letters and animals in order to get comfortable with the mimicking nature of yogic instruction.

In the STEM classroom with Ms. Zimmer, the kiddos spent a lot of time down by the pond discussing, making hypotheses, forming questions, and then researching many aspects about the pond. Students also discussed the life cycle of frogs, representing it in a couple of science-based art projects. In any spare time we had, we worked with our math facts across the four operations by several different games that have become very popular with all of the age groups.

Cooking and gardening have become a huge part of Ms. Gadhue's literacy block, which is a great way to practice and hone technical reading and writing skills. The students harvested mammoth cucumbers and radishes and put up several quarts of refrigerator pickles that we will enjoy next week. They are keeping up with recipe writing for our ELP summer garden cookbook as well, so that the recipes they learn this week can be replicated later on for family and friends at home. Learning to use garden treats for healthy eats fits great with our wellness themes and also helps students become stewards of the new MCS garden. These are great life skills that we are glad to be honing through expanded learning!

Perennial ELP favorite specials educator Shawn Kimball also joined us this week to get students familiar with cameras, Go-Pros, filming, and videography. Shawn will be joining us on and off in Week 4 and all of Week 5 in conjunction with Ashley and Skyler our theatre specialists to pull together some movies for the ELP Film Festival in Bristol on August 5th. ELP-ers as young as six right up through our oldest participants all learned how to use cameras and phones to take videos and even did some underwater Go-Pro filming at the pond, which was a perfect way to spend a sweltering Friday!

Old MacDonald Had a Farm...

I often talk about how lucky I feel getting to organize Expanded Learning Program workshops for students at Robinson Elementary. As Session V, our final session of the school year, has gotten underway I once again find myself lucky. This time I am lucky because I am learning right along with the students.

Kerry Kurt, owner and operator of Unbound Grace at Sentinel Farms in Starksboro has opened her barn doors to our students. I get to travel along as the chauffeur and chaperone. We showed up to the farm on Day 1 and the only way I can describe the excitement of the students is as if they had entered the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds for the first time. They had the attention spans of gnats. Kerry, who has upwards of 15 summer campers took everything in stride.

Our first task was learning how to groom a horse. Our test subject was Charlotte. She was very patient while the little hands learned which brushes to use and in which order to use the different brushes. Dylan, a 3rd grader, was psyched about brushing her tail and couldn't wait to braid it when he was finished!

On Day 2 the attention spans grew, by a few seconds. They were even excited to learn how to clean out a stall. Think shoveling poop. (I opted out of this learning experience). Kerry took us on a tour of the property where we were able to get up close and personal with 4 calves. We also saw all 15 of her horses, including her yearlings.

The students involved in this workshop are lucky to have Kerry as their leader. As we went on our walking tour Kerry shared many of her reasons for opening her farm to students. As we watched the four students run as fast as their legs would carry them towards the calves she said, "They need this. They need to run without structure." How true. In a world where we have allowed strict schedules to rule our lives and our children's lives it is refreshing to have an adult who understands the bigger picture.

Session 3 Is 4 Times The Fun

Monkton is pumped to kick off our third session of ELP with our returning dream team of MCS classroom teachers Stacy Carter, Caitlin Leggett, Jenn Livingston, and Kelly Pierpont and MCS alum Shawn Kimball making up our awesome workshop leadership team! The title of this post references the fact that in our third session, we have quadrupled enrollment from our first session back in the fall. ELP is rocking at MCS and we have the droves of enthusiastic students to prove it.

This session, our workshops include Food Network (cooking and video tutorial productions of recipes) for 3rd through 6th graders, Craft Club for the K-2 crowd, and Film Production with the 5th and 6th graders. Already, we are off and running on a great session, so stay tuned for updates and pictures from Monkton!

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

Ahoj Priatelia

Wondering what the title of this post refers to? Feel free to ask students participating in International Interactions. Igor, a native of Slovakia, is teaching students useful phrases, such as "ahoj priatelia" meaning, "hello friends". This past Thursday students began building churches similar to those found in Slovakia. They are using different types of blocks, popsicle sticks, and paint.







Everyday Spanish participants spent the week with "The Very Hungary Caterpillar" in Spanish. They began creating their very own caterpillar masks. They are also learning the names of specific foods in Spanish. We're very lucky to have a teacher fluent in Spanish!







The Robinson Pirates spent part of the week studying cartography. They have made their very own maps...perhaps they lead to treasure! They are also continuing to create their pirate garb. They are now the proud owners/wearers of pirate hats!

 The Math Masters created their very own marble runs and competed against one another to see which contraption sent the marble flying the farthest!

With Thanksgiving just around the corner we have been having discussions about what we are thankful for in our lives. I would like to take a moment and reflect regarding ELP.

I am thankful that Monday-Friday students choose to walk through the library door ready to continue their own education. Some attend 2 hours a week, other choose to be here for two different workshops totaling 4 hours a week. Whether they know it or not they are choosing to better themselves. Instead of going home and sitting in front of a screen they choose to stay at school and sit in front of a mentor.

I am thankful for those mentors who choose to spend their time with the youth in their community. These educators are making an impact and influencing the next generation through play and creativity. These wonderful community members are the ones who create excitement and have students excited for the next workshop and for that we are lucky.

Dovidenia! (Goodbye!)