Phys. Ed.... At A Glance!

When I arrived at school my heart rose to realize it was a Tuesday. My favorite day of the week. Gym class was going to be soon. I became really eager to start because we were playing soccer at this point in the curriculum. I have always loved soccer. We had morning meeting and then we ran outside and entered gym class.

We started by choosing goalies and outfielders. It ended up being that there was no goal guard or offense. Joe and I were on one team and Meg and Mr. Pat were on the other team.  It was pure battle. We tried our hardest to keep scoring balls as much as we could. Most of the time the team I was on ended up getting hurt or falling over. Then my phys. ed. teacher scored, so we went into another battle.

Finally I freed the ball from Mr. Pat’s grip and ran with it. Then I tripped and he scored. Then I got the ball again and scored! I cheered and moved on to the next round. I felt great to score but again Mr. Pat went on to score. So we took a five minute break and went on with the game.

When we re-entered the game Mr.Pat and I were in a race for the ball. I forced my foot to retrieve the ball although I saw his  foot reaching for the ball as well.  I saw that the impact would be great. When he missed the ball I heard a slam and I heard cracking on my left foot. I fell to the ground holding back tears as my toes didn’t fully come back out. So we went to the table. When I took off my shoe and sock I saw a nightmare. My toes had become black and blue all over and I saw the pulsing and surging that came from my foot. When I saw it I Wanted to cry! I felt so much worse after seeing what had happened. I felt as though I was looking into a vision as I thought about my career as a sports player. I thought I would never be able to run or walk right again. 

After a while of watching and staring at my foot we decided to play dodgeball. But we played hand ball first.  After that we played some dodgeball. As the balls were flying from one side of the court to the other Joe got hit and was down. Now I was supposed to tag him up. I stood behind the tree and made sure I couldn’t get hit. So my gym teacher called me “Limpy” and “Hoppy” and “Hopscotch” just to make me mad. So I freed Joe at the point that he hit my foot with the dodgeball again. Then our time was up and we finished gym. 

Creative Block Prints

I groan as my dad shakes me, saying, “It’s seven thirty, time to get up!” I reluctantly slide out of my cozy bed, and get dressed. Then I look at the calendar and see that it is Wednesday. I suddenly rush downstairs to the kitchen to see what we have to eat. It seems like ages before I finally head out the door and walk to school. Morning meeting seems like forever. When it is over I run to our classroom. There is our art teacher, Ms. Shira, spreading newspaper and inks on the table. I flop into a seat, relieved that she could come today.

We have been making block prints with inks and cloth, mixing the colors into beautiful shades of blue, purple, green and red, and transferring them to paper and cloth. We first had to make the prints, taking tabs of boring, plain gray linoleum and carving lovely pictures and designs on them and using them to print. When they are printed on rainbow paper the colors of the print and of the paper blend and mix to make colors that make your mouth water.

We are now making pillows, choosing what inks go well with what cloths, pricking our fingers with needles and pins. We eagerly jam our stuffing into the pillows, making them plump and huggable. When we have stuffed them to our satisfaction, we have to sew up the seam. Tricky job. Involving many “Ow!”s and “Ouch!”s, the seams are complete and, ta-da, we have pillows. Fluffy, soft, pretty, and plump, these pillows are fun to make!

We have also used cardboard to make block prints. We first drew our outlines of whatever picture we were making, animals, people, or just designs. We cut them out, choosing parts to be separated from the rest. We then glued them to a background and spread a glue over it to protect it when we printed. There are so many things you can make block prints with, and many of them are so different!

Chocolate cake description.

This is what the students of Islesford did to get ready to write description. We turned the sentence "I love chocolate cake" into this page-long description. Enjoy the chocolate cake ;). 

I was lying down when a warm breeze blew in the smell of something delicious.  I sat up and tried to let my nose guide me to it. The scent guided me to the kitchen and there on the counter was a strawberry smothered chocolate cake with melted fudge oozing down the sides. When I saw the cake my taste buds burst, making my mouth a waterfall. I dove for the cake but my mother slapped my hand away, and with a shrill voice she said, “Go to your room, that's my cake!” As I trudged to my room my body flopped around as my feet were dragging. The scent of the cake seemed to be following me just to tease my nostrils. Suddenly, the door of the house slammed shut and I stopped dead in my tracks to listen for movement inside. But all I heard were the sounds of my mother walking away from the house. Excitement flooded my body. I turned and dashed toward the kitchen tripping over myself as I tumbled down the staircase. I stared at the counter to see no cake there. My mother had taken it with her. Suddenly, a tear trickled down my face as I ran to my room. Suddenly, I started sobbing “But I love chocolate cake”

Our Native American Project

 This trimester we have been studying the Age of Exploration and Discovery. We started by researching major tribes in the Age of Exploration and Discovery, specifically the Incas, Aztecs and Wabanakis. We used books, Internet, background information, our teachers, and our parents for our research. We studied the Incas and Aztecs because they were huge empires. We studied the Wabanaki because they were in our area. We wanted to find out about their lifestyle and culture and the geography of where they lived.  Each person in the class made a poster of their tribe, including a picture of the tribe, a paragraph explaining the basic outline of their lifestyle, and a how-to-be a Native American poem. A How To poem is a poem that tells you how to be the culture or person in the poem. This is an example of a How To poem: 

How To Be A Wabanaki

Be Resourceful

Live on the water

Eat seafood

Use canoes for fishing

Go hunting

Move from place to place

Build houses out of birch bark and animal hides

Have large families

Believe in guardian spirits

We are currently working on a poster all together of the European cultures. We have learned a lot and had fun in the process!

Space In One Room

The Islesford School students tried to figure out a lot about the planets by making scale models of what the planets look like and their characteristics. We decided that for our model Earth would be 5 cm in Diameter.  That meant that Jupiter would be 55 cm in diameter and Pluto would be 1 cm in diameter.

How Our Garden Grows!

Last spring, the students of the Islesford School
began working on a school garden. After a very difficult growing season, we realized the garden needed help. With the help of Eliza Greenman, Becka Gange, many community members we enriched the soil by sheet mulching the beds.
Sheet mulching is also known as composting in place and lasagna gardening. It involves layering different forms of carbon and nitrogen on top of the garden beds. After adding many layers of manure, seaweed, food scraps, leaves, and grass clippings to each of the beds, we covered each pile with cardboard and newspaper. Finally we added another layer of seaweed and grass clippings to suppress weeds. We're hopeful that our soil will be in much better shape and full of worms in the spring! We'll be studying Colonial America in the spring. Should we try to plant a colonial garden? What would we plant in a colonial garden? What should we plant?

Welcome to the Islesford School!

Come on in and visit our very small island school! The Islesford School serves children in grades K-8 from Islesford and Great Cranberry Island. This blog follows the activities of our school. We hope you enjoy your visit!