Poetry Slamming with Monhegan

For the last several writing sessions with Monhegan we have been working on writing poetry.  Now that each student has a collection of original poetry, it's time to slam!  

Today we met with Monhegan and began working on how to perform our poems.  To get ideas about how to perform a piece of poetry, we watched four YouTube videos of different aged students from around the country performing their original poetry.  

Some ideas that were generated from the videos:

• Perform poetry with more than one person.
• Get into it!  Show some emotion!
•  Use your body to express the poem.
• Change the tempo of your speaking.  

The students all chose to work with partners to begin working on performing their poems.  

Here students from Monhegan and the Ashley Bryan school work on some ideas for performing one of their poems. 

Here two students from the Ashley Bryan School work on one of their poems. 

After practicing, we shared our ideas for performance. This student from Monhegan and....

this student from the Ashley Bryan School performed a poem together. 

Pretty fun stuff!

Best Week Ever.

Today was our final day of our first ever TLC Spirit Week! 

We kicked off the week with a pajama day on Monday followed by opposite/backward day on Tuesday. 

One pajama day kiddo.   

Another pajama day kiddo. 

Opposite day fashion....

Even his boots are on the wrong feet!

Even the teachers got into the spirit!

But, the best day of Spirit Week was today--TLC Colors Day!!

100% of the students and teachers at each TLC school wore their spirit colors!  After showing off our terrific outfits, we played a game of TLC jeopardy.  The final scores were close, but the Ashley Bryan School won!  We celebrated like crazy!

The final event of TLC Spirit Week was a sharing of the TLC cheers!  Each school came up with their own cheer.  Here is ours:

Have you ever been fishing with the TLC
All the little fishies swimming up and down the sea
With your hands in your pockets and your pockets in your pants
All the little fishies doin' the TLC dance!

Monhegan, Matinicus
Isle Au Haut, Cliff
Ashley Bryan School
And the TLC Rock!

With your hands in your pockets
and your pockets in your pants
All the little fishies doing the TLC dance!

The Rosamond Lane Lord Fund

We had special guests on Friday:  Sarah Corson and Ashley Bryan!  They visited the school to share about the Rosamond Lane Lord (RLL) Fund.  The fund was created by Ashley Bryan to honor Sarah Corson's mother, Rosamond Lord.  Rosamond spent her life making art.  When she died,  Ashley Bryan wanted to continue to make some of her prints available to people in the community.  Over the years he printed many copies of ten of Rosamond's prints and the money from those prints was put into a fund.  Ashley and Sarah decided that the fund would benefit the children of the Ashley Bryan School by providing funding for special arts projects.    On Friday, Ashley and Sarah came by the school to tell the children about Rosamond and the RLL Fund.

Sarah and Ashely came to the school to tell us about the RLL Fund and to show us some of the art Rosamond made throughout her life.  She made so many interesting and beautiful things!

Rosamond made art out of things that she found in nature, like these little turtles made out of beach rocks. 

She made jewelry and decorations with seeds and nuts she found.

She made block prints of different scenes of the island.

She painted metal trays and made ordinary things, like band-aid boxes, beautiful.

She also loved to knit for the people that she loved. 

When she died, Ashley wanted to continue to share her art work.  He decided to continue to make prints from 10 of her print blocks.  Here are two of the ten prints that he continued to sell to establish the RLL Fund. 

The RLL Fund purchased many picture books for the Islesford Library. 

These books were purchased because of their beautiful artwork and/or because they focus on an artist.  Hopefully our students and community members will be inspired to make art!

The RLL Fund also purchased art supplies for each student at the Ashley Bryan School! 

 In addition to the books and the great art supply gifts, the RLL Fund will also bring visiting artists to the Ashley Bryan School.  Our first guest artist will be a print block maker! 

Introducing The Ashley Bryan School!

Oh My Goodness!  Oh My Dear!   Sassafrass and Ginger Beer!  We changed our name!

At Town Meeting on Saturday, the town voted overwhelmingly to change the name of our school to the Ashley Bryan School!  We are all so filled with joy about the change.

This afternoon we worked on a special surprise for Ashley. 

We painted beautiful signs for our school that included some of our favorite quotes from his books and his favorite poems.  My People!  Still Got it!  Uh-Huh!  Beautiful Blackbird!

Then Jim and Henry worked on putting our new signs up on the school!  It was done just in time for our guest of honor!

He loved the new signs!

Then Ashley led us all in a choral chanting of "My People" by Langston Hughes!  

And while we were enjoying ginger bread and orange soda, Ashley performed another poem, "Things" by Eloise Greenfield.  Still got it!

We love our new school!

One Snowy Day

Winter has been kind to us this year.  In fact, it sometimes seems like it missed us all together.  But, last Thursday we were blessed with that perfect kind of snow.  Eight inches of it, too!  We knew the rain was rolling in on Saturday, so we decided to take advantage of our one snowy day and we went snowshoeing all afternoon on Friday.

We were so tired, but we had so much fun!