News & Reminders

• There is a section at the bottom of this post about Standardized Testing. Please let me know once you read through it whether you’d like to have me use the MAP Test during our regular school day as the standardized test or if you prefer to take your child to a NC Testing Center for a test on your own. I will plan to do the MAP tests mid to late May.
• We will take a field trip this week. I will share more once the kids and I have a chance to talk more on Monday 🙂

Highlights From Our Week…

• Earth Day was on Tuesday and so we talked about the history of Earth Day and the theme for this year, Our Power Our Planet. We talked about the Paris Climate Agreement and read an article to share President Trump’s decision to remove the US from the agreement. Following our reading, we fact checked President Trump’s statements and discussed our individual opinions on whether or not we agree with President Trump’s thinking. Charlotte fact checked Trump’s statement that “China was allowed to act with immunity while the US was held to unreasonable standards”. She found that China is actually doing a wide variety of things to support a reduction in carbon output and aims to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2060. Laurence and Sterling fact checked to find out that Trump’s complaint that the US always has a bigger role and that other countries don’t do their share isn’t true. We talked about how the Paris Climate Agreement lets each country set their own goals and that it is reasonable for countries like the US, who use a far greater share of resources, and output more carbon, would have a bigger job to do to reduce emissions. Ollie shared that he feels angry when he reads about Trump’s decisions and I described that our anger can be useful towards feeling the motivation to make change. When we feel angry, we can recognize it and choose our response.
• We investigated the pond this week to develop a prediction on whether the pond was a healthy ecosystem or not. First, we researched together to find out what to look for to help us decide about the health of the pond. We read this article, Healthy pond and wetland ecosystems and they each took two sections to read, write and share about so we all had the needed information. Charlotte wasn’t here on this day, so she caught up and did all the reading and writing on Thursday. On Thursday, we went out to the pond to look for signs of trash, diversity of plant life, amounts of algae, trophic levels and the amount/health of the soil. Together we took turns taking the lead on sharing the information we found and typing it into our shared document and then we each made our individual predictions on the health of the pond and explained our thinking. At the end of the day, we began our series of water tests to confirm whether or not the pond environment represented a healthy ecosystem. We tested the dissolved oxygen levels in the puddle makeshift pond and the actual pond and found the ppm to be 46/48 which means the oxygen levels in the pond are poor. We will continue our water testing next week. Here is the report we’ve been working on so far for everyone to see.
• As always, working alongside kids never ceases to amaze me. I just finished writing a short-form book to share the philosophy behind Bridges Academy more broadly and so I’ve been including some of the content in conversation with the kids. This week we kind of naturally fell into a conversation about the purpose for education when Ollie asked me if he could spend some time looking up to see if a real pilot’s routine to start a flight really reflected what he was experiencing in his flight simulation. This gave me a chance to talk with them about the “why” behind going to school. I explained that there are really three purposes for school. One is to help kids find and develop their passions and gifts so they can contribute these through the world of work, the second is to guide them in learning about how the world works so they can form values and make choices that help to support our growing/changing world and the third is to learn to work collaboratively alongside others so we can create together and solve problems that our inter-connected world faces. I explained that we are all more motivated and curious to explore some things more than others and often, these things become our passions. Knowing what we are deeply care about, to the point that we choose to do it when no one tells us we have to and paying attention to what our strengths are can help us to figure out who we are and how we want to shape our life, including in the world of work. I described that this is why we have time included in our day for their personal projects and why I always list learning in our checklists and home learning as directed or self-directed. I shared that it is important for Ollie to explore flight simulation, moments in history and politics, Laurence his love for piano, skateboarding and animation, Sterling’s passion for sewing, painting and her gift for organizing, planning and shopping for ideas and items, Charlotte’s gifts for creating artwork, sewing, and her love for animals. We each have our own unique strengths and gifts and when we know what they are and feel comfortable sharing them, we begin to feel a strong sense for who we are and can lead and create together with others. I highlighted to Sterling that the way she organized, researched and shopped for the chicks for our ecosystem exploration showed amazing skills, commitment and time. I shared that this skill she has is a gift and it is a job in the world of work called procurement to buy things that businesses and companies need. I could feel the “ah ha” moment in the kids as they started to think about their individual gifts and strengths. Charlotte wasn’t with us on this day, but it led to Sterling showing us how flexible she is when she put her leg behind her head and the boys were incredibly impressed. She showed them how she was practicing to do a handstand and Ollie showed her a trick he uses to climb up a wall into a handstand. I shared the tri-pod I form to do a headstand and Laurence wanted to try it. We just kind of naturally fell into being collaborative and willing to show and share our strengths with one another to help each other. I also had a chance to explain why we also spend time learning non-preferred things …..we often need to learn and do non-preferred things as stepping stones towards a bigger goal and it is important for all of us to understand how the world works in many different ways so that we can be intelligent enough to be critical thinkers who can evaluate information and make decisions that impact our world.
• Ollie and Laurence are both working on metric measurement this week for math, so they decided to work together. Ollie hesitated, as in the past, when they tried to listen/read “Hunger Games” together, it didn’t wind up working out well. They decided to give it a go and I wound up sitting in the kitchen to watch the process. I explained that being able to work together with others is an important goal too and learning strategies for how to be able to focus, support and “bounce ideas/strategies off” one another take time to figure out. Sterling is working on long multiplication problems and recognizing how one little misstep can cause the whole problem to come out wrong. We talked about how having the patience and slowing down to do each little step can help with accuracy and that although she would likely use a calculator to do these kinds of problems in a work environment, it is important to know how the math works and that developing patience, slowing down for accuracy and sticking with something hard are always useful skills that apply in lots of areas of our lives. Charlotte is working on geometry and flipping shapes on a graph. This is a very challenging skill and again, like Sterling, she may not often use this skill in her chosen line of work at some point, but having the stamina to figure out and work through a tough problem and have the resilience to get through frustration to learning new things is always valuable.
• All the kids are reading their chosen books. Laurence is reading “The One and Only Ivan”, Ollie is reading “Maze Runner”, Sterling is reading a historical novel about Abraham Lincoln, “Chasing Lincoln’s Killer” and Charlotte is in the process of choosing a new book after finishing her novel “If Cats Disappeared from the World”. We usually choose the order of our learning based on our shared checklist, but on Wednesday, we trialed setting aside a shared time where we were all reading at the same time, me included. I thought this really worked well as everyone had the needed quiet time to deeply engage in reading. Reading is not everyone’s preferred choice and so it was an exciting moment on the drive home this week, when Laurence and Ollie made a connection between a song they were listening to and a character in the “Hunger Games”. I was thrilled to hear them book talking and making connections on their own beyond the contents of the book to their own lives. This is exactly what reading is about 🙂

Standardized Testing

All homeschools are responsible for giving a standardized test to students each year. The timing and what test is taken are up to families as long as the test is a standardized one. We do not have to send test results to the state, they just remain in the learning records that I keep for each of the kids. You are welcome to take your child to a state testing site for testing. Since we are not required to use the NC State EOG test, I will also offer the opportunity for the kids to take a standardized MAP test during our regular learning day. This test is often used by home school families as it isn’t timed and it gives a more natural, relaxed feeling of being one measure among many. I like this test as it isn’t confined to grade level. Just like IXL, the questions asked are signaled by each individual child’s response. Here is some more information about the MAP Test.

“MAP Growth tests are used by over nine million students in the United States and utilized by over 140 countries worldwide. “The NWEA MAP test is designed to adjust to each student’s responses, making the test easier or more difficult depending on how accurate the student’s responses are. MAP Growth tests are adaptive, cross-grade, and achievement-focused. An adaptive test means that your student will experience a test that flexes with them as they answer each question. Each test level provides challenging questions with the potential to go above grade-level to adequately measure your student’s current knowledge level. Nationally-normed and standardized – A norming study takes places every few years to ensure that MAP Growth assessments are using precise measurements that are congruent with current education standards to measure your students achievement. What this means is your student is being compared with students from all over the United States who participated in the most recent norming study. The most recent study was published in early 2020.”

Photos …

From This Week…

News & Reminders

• We will begin a new exploration in science this week to study the interconnectedness of Earth’s ecosystems. I have scheduled a field trip for Monday, April 7th so the kids can explore a mini-farm ecosystem located in Concord. Amanda and Corey keep bees and produce honey, raise chickens for eggs/meat and farm vegetables, herbs and flowers. Amanda is a teacher and artist who brings to life all of these animals and plants with her descriptions and stories!
• Picture This! is an app that I have and will use with the kids to help them identify the plants they see around us on our exploration of ecosystems. If you would like your child to have their own access to this app, it can be found in the Apple Store. There is a free version of this app. I have the version that cost $29.99 per year. I’ve had it for several years and love it! I use it for foraging, but also just to become aware of the value of all the life around me.
• Spring break is ahead. We will begin our break on April 12th and come back together on Tuesday, April 22nd. Please let me know if you’d like home learning texted for Friday April 11th or if you prefer to do self-directed learning on family trips or staycation.

Highlights from Our Week..

• I recorded a discussion the kids had last week on what would happen if the atmosphere disappeared. I recorded it because I was excited to hear the level of interest and excitement they were showing as they bounced off each other asking questions, finding answers and sharing with each other. When I played it back later, I noticed that although their discussion was rich with information, they were more waiting to speak then listening to one another. They also struggled with talking over one another and connecting in discussion. This week, for social studies, I provided a model of a good discussion for them by watching an episode of Middle Ground. This show brings people with opposing points of view together and they participate in a discussion to reach a point of connection or “middle ground” (Note: I had to carefully search for appropriate episodes for them to watch). While they were watching, I asked them to record and share the things they noticed that went well in the discussion and things they thought could improve. They did a great job identifying that “they took turns talking”, “they don’t talk while someone else is talking”, and “they are willing to think outside their first opinion”. I added, “They think with each other and build ideas by listening to each other” and “it is a safe space where everyone is willing to be honest and share openly because they are listening with an open mind instead of judgement”, and “they say things like “I can relate to you…, “I see your point” and “I want to understand what your side is like” to help them get to middle ground.” As they shared their thoughts, they kind of just naturally started having a great discussion with each other and they asked if we could do our own middle ground discussion (they called it a debate). I could see vast improvement as compared to our discussion the other day! We will continue working on this especially since they are asking to have more discussions.
• Ollie was in charge of the recipe this week. He chose making boba tea. We all had to figure this one out together as none of us had made boba start to finish before (Charlotte had a little experience). The kids read through the recipe and we successfully made brown sugar boba tea with homemade brown sugar sauce and ice cream with boba and brown sugar sauce.
• Ollie’s diorama pieces arrived, and he started to put together the very tiny pieces to make his tank for his project. He did a great job at reading instructions and diagrams as well as having the patience to take his time to figure out things. Laurence has continued to work on playing the piano and chose two books that will help him to explore the lives of famous classical piano musicians. He has also begun to work on how to read music. Sterling figured out how to thread the sewing machine and she and Charlotte tested the machine on scrap material and eventually, on the scarf she is making. We opened her pattern and started figuring out how patterns work. She is planning on watching a video to do more research on how patterns work.
• We finished up our study on meteorology this week by thinking about our atmosphere and how it functions to keep our Earth thriving. First, they wrote to predict what would happen if the atmosphere disappeared and then we watched “What If the Earth’s Atmosphere Disappeared” to find out more. I was blown away at how much they collectively predicted about what would happen and we were all surprised by the things we didn’t realize would result.
• We also learned about the importance of our ozone layer. I used this topic as a way to share with them what happens when everyone on Earth comes together to solve a shared problem. In the 1980’s, scientists discovered that CFC’s were rapidly causing a hole in our ozone layer. At first, people didn’t take the threat seriously and the companies who were making billions of dollars on products that contained CFC’s tried to discredit the scientists. Ultimately, as the scientists shared irrefutable evidence, through a study in Antarctica, leaders of the world gathered and signed the Montreal Protocol. This was the first agreement signed by every attending country! CFC’s were quickly banned and our ozone layer began to repair itself. We have learned about rising ocean levels and slowing ocean currents, rising world temperatures and concerns about our atmosphere so far this year and I wanted to make sure the kids felt empowered with hope that we can collectively influence and change our current climate crisis. We did an “around the world” question game to review and test our knowledge of what we learned about the ozone layer solutions.
• Laurence challenged himself with trying out Charlotte’s 8th grade math this week. It was interesting to see how motivated he was to figure out how to do this higher-level math of his own choosing. He also continued to work on his own 5th grade measurement IXL skills. Ollie and I practiced with two-digit multiplication. I shared with him that it takes repeated practice to move new information from working memory to long term memory and we’ve been testing this out by doing a few problems every day. We both did a problem together and he timed me at 9 seconds and his own time at 34 seconds. I explained that I was faster because my math facts and the process of doing double digit multiplication was in my long-term memory as I had repeated the pattern of doing these problems over a long time. He spent the next half hour timing himself doing problem after problem to notice how his speed and accuracy increased. Sterling has gotten used to how to use IXL and now does it easily! Using the Action Plan to work though her math skills has really worked well, so we will continue with this strategy. Charlotte worked on rate of change word problems and also rotating figures on a graph. She did a great job at having the patience to work through how to do these problems with me step by step.
• Sterling posted writing on the atmosphere while Ollie wrote to share his thinking on the consequences of leaked war plans on the Signal chat by Pete Hegseth. Laurence and Charlotte are finishing up their writing and will post on Monday. All the kids are continuing with reading their chosen books except for Laurence who began reading “The One and Only Ivan”this week.

Photos …

News & Reminders

• Future City Prize Money Update: Charlotte received her share on Thursday. Ollie and I ordered the supplies for his WWII Diorama, with his share, on Thursday and I will give Laurence his share on Monday. Hopefully, all the kids will enjoy using their money to expand the self-directed learning they are each passionate about 🙂
• Spring Break Dates – Our last day to meet together before Spring Break is April 10th. We have a home learning day on the 11th, but if you are traveling or enjoying learning together locally, this self-directed work can be the home learning for this day. I am also happy to provide our regular structured list. We gather together for our first day back to learning together on Tuesday, April 22nd.

Highlights from Our Week…The words describing our week are below the photos. I thought I’d change it up this week 🙂

Photos from Our Week…

Highlights from Our Week…

St. Patrick’s Day

Sterling sharing about St. Patrick’s Day inspired me to include a special activity for the kids to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and to honor Sterling’s first official day joining us 🙂 I made a scavenger hunt trivia game with clues to solve and included trivia questions about St. Patrick’s Day. I remember scavenger hunts as a kid … making clues for one another to solve was a regular past time and I wondered if they’d still find the fun in it. We celebrated by making green St. Patrick’s Day inspired waffles together at the end of our game.

Update on Our Experiment with No Electronics during Breaks/Lunch..

We finished our two-week commitment to no electronics during lunch and learning breaks on Thursday. I saw some frustration, but mostly lots of honesty and integrity from the kids as they stayed strong on their commitment. Trying it out for 2 weeks let them see for themselves how much of their life is centered around the pull of video games, cell phones, memes, you tube shorts, TV etc. This experiment provided a good chance for them to personalize thinking critically about the research we did on what makes a good learning break and how hard it is to develop self-control/self-discipline with these devices constantly available. They are so easy to grab and use that we often skip out on the chance to be bored and imagine all the things we might choose to do. We will talk together next week about how they found the experiment and plan a next step.

Social Studies/Mindset

After our viewing of “Please Vote for Me” last week, we continued developing flexibility in our thinking by watching Chinese teachers come to teach at a British School in the documentary, “Are Our Kids Tough Enough?” during lunch on Wednesday. My hope is that having a chance to see how people from different cultures view what is “normal” will open the kids to realizing there is often more than one right answer to many questions. Hopefully, multiple perspectives will encourage them to imagine the wide range of possible answers, we each may envision. Having this flexibility improves our capacity to relate to people who are different to us and sets the stage for good communication, relationship building and the open mindedness required to see that we are more alike than different.

We also spent time thinking more about comfort zones, learning zones and panic zones. I gave some examples of things like speaking in front of a group, introducing yourself to someone you don’t know, traveling internationally etc and asked them to share where each of these things land for them. It was interesting for them to see how very differently each felt as what was easily in one person’s comfort zone was not at all comfortable for someone else. We also talked about why we would want to step outside our comfort zones and how we could each find ways to gently edge out. For example, Sterling shared that traveling internationally was outside her comfort zone (she mentioned the suggestion of a trip to Guatemala as a no go for her). I said, “Is there anything that would entice you to shift towards edging out of your comfort zone to go?”. She said that she likes shopping and if she knew of great shopping there, she may feel the motivation to try. As our comfort zones expand, we are likely to connect with others more easily as our mind is more open to a wider variety of possibilities in general.

Reading & Writing

One of my favorite moments with the kids is going through the process of supporting them in their growing capacity to share their unique perspectives through the writing process. They usually decide what they are going to write about early in the week and then research, write, add details and edit throughout the week so they’ll be ready to post on Thursday. I work one on one with them during the writing process so they can each develop their writing from their individual starting points.

Ollie came in on Monday sharing his thoughts after watching, “Above the Noise: Should Teachers Be Allowed to Carry Guns at School?” He chose to research and write to share his opinion. I guided him to gather multiple perspectives, including quoting credible sources as well as asking his classmates and others for their perspectives which helped him to develop and clarify his own thinking. You can see his writing linked here. Sterling wrote a review on her blog for the Nancy Drew book she just finished reading. I gave her a graphic organizer as a way to support beginning to write her review and then after reading her thoughts, we looked together for places where she could add details, descriptions and explanations to give clarity and depth to her writing. I also showed her “Goodreads“to provide examples for the many different kinds of reviews people write and to offer a platform to consider posting her own book reviews in the future. It is also a great site to use to find new book selections. Charlotte posted her thoughts on how it feels to go through the process of developing new habits around electronics use. She presented her writing in a journaling sort of style and as this was a deeply personal sharing of her thoughts and feelings, I read and reflected with her and confirmed how powerful it is to get your thoughts and feelings out through this style of writing. Laurence was out a few days this week on a family trip, so he will share his writing next week. I work with all the kids on grammar as a last area of editing just before they post.

Everyone is busy reading their individual books of choice and continued with reading their selections. We spend lots of time reading and researching for information in our content areas as well as in the moment research with questions that pop up during our learning day.

Math

Sterling is using IXL in a different way than Ollie, Laurence or Charlotte. After taking her first diagnostic, she follows the Action Plan based on the results of her diagnostic to learn the math skills she needs to focus on next. As she updates the diagnostics weekly, the Action Plan updates. Laurence, Ollie and Charlotte each follow the NC EOG Curriculum Standards for their respective grades and take diagnostics to update how their progress is coming along. I have also used this area to expand on the skills Sterling may need as well. Ollie, Laurence and Sterling are doing a Measurement unit in Grade 4/5 and so cooking has provided a great real-life application of the skills they are learning!

Science

We continued with our study of meteorology this week. We watched a short video to see how meteorologists look at wind to predict weather and read about wind here. Ducksters is a great site to learn from as it includes more options to accommodate the many different ways people like to access information. It gives kids a choice to read and also an audio choice if they prefer to read/listen along and a comprehension tool to self-assess how much information they gathered from their reading/research. We made homemade anemometers to test wind speed for ourselves. We are hoping to track wind speed over several days and graph the results next week.

Self-Directed Learning

• Ollie chose our recipe this week and guided us through the process of making homemade cinnamon rolls. Working with yeast was relatively new for both of them.
• Sterling began a sewing project and she and Charlotte worked together to try to figure out how the sewing machine works. Both girls have a common interest in sewing and so hoping that they will continue to collaborate on individual sewing projects.
• Laurence spent time learning to play “The Entertainer” on the piano this week and Charlotte also spent time on piano practicing a song she is working on. She is also planning to bring her guitar to practice on as well. The piano has provided a GREAT opportunity for learning breaks.
• Ollie ordered the pieces for his WWII diorama and they should arrive by Monday.
• We spent time outside this week and went to the neighborhood park on Thursday. Charlotte made a beautiful flower crown while we were there.

News & Reminders…

• Super excited to welcome Sterling, Kelly and Sam to our learning group! Sterling brought amazing energy to our group when she visited on Thursday. She enjoys crafting and creating, reading and has some amazing tech skills as well. I will add Kelly and Sam to our group chat on Sunday so you can all welcome them too 🙂
• Spring break is coming soon and we will be on holiday break from April 14th – the 21st. We will come back together for learning on Tuesday the 22nd of April.
• I received the check back from the Future City Competition on Friday, now with the Bridges Academie spelling, so I should be able to deposit it this week and then give the kids the share of their “best use of recycled materials” winning to use for their various projects. Charlotte may use her share to pay for her babysitting course or to print her flyers? Laurence may want to use his for something around piano or skateboarding and Ollie is going to use his to purchase the materials for the WWII diorama project he is working on. I will keep Ollie’s share here and purchase his supplies for his project with him. Please let me know if you’d like me to send the money directly to you to manage with your child or whether it is ok to give it directly to them. I will likely be able to have it ready for them on Tuesday or latest Wednesday.

Highlights From This Week…

Science..

This week we continued with our exploration of meteorology. We watched a short video to see how meteorologists determine what our weather will be like and we researched to find out what sorts of tools meteorologists use. We found out that the four main things that a meteorologist looks at to predict the weather include temperature, wind speed/direction, air pressure and humidity. This week, we explored more about air pressure by making homemade barometers and reading them each day to see how the pressure changes predicted weather. Each of the kids are in charge of finding an experiment they’d like to do with the other indicators: Charlotte is working on humidity, Laurence on temperature and Ollie on altitude. As Sterling will join us on Monday, maybe she will help us out with finding an experiment she’d like to do on wind direction and speed 🙂

Math..

All the kids took diagnostics on Tuesday so they could see how they’ve grown as math learners. They were super excited to compare their diagnostic results from January to now and were very proud of their growth. I loved to see them get excited about these measures rather than feeling the pressure that often comes when we use the word “test.” All 3 kids wound up asking when they could take another diagnostic so, I think they like having a chance to see for themselves how their learning is progressing :). If any of you wish to see your child’s results, let me know and I can make copies for you. IXL shows the most recent diagnostic results, but not the previous results (as far as I can see), but I have copies of all of them in the binders I keep for the kids.

Reading/Writing…

Ollie finished reading “Hunger Games”and has chosen “Mazerunner” as a new book. Laurence will finish up reading “Hunger Games” this coming week. We are hoping to watch the movie and work on a discussion guide together once they all finish, so please let me know if anyone is concerned about watching this movie. Charlotte is almost finished with “If Cats Disappeared from the World” and she posted her thinking around this book on her individual blog this week. Laurence also posted writing on the history and process of making Korean Corn Dogs as he picked out and was in charge of directing us through the making of these this week. Ollie finished up his writing on our electronics take apart work this week and he should likely post his writing to his blog on Monday (he sadly, once again experienced losing his writing when he was almost finished). I was so excited to see Sterling bring a book from the Nancy Drew series on Thursday! I loved these books too and read every one of them when I was her age.

Mindset, Social/Emotional Skills and Social Studies…

Building trust in yourself comes with practice and support from the people around you who believe in you enough to let you make decisions, be accountable for your choices and experiment with what you are capable of. We grow in our competence when we have a chance to figure things out, ask for help when we need it and experiment until we find what works. It is the foundation for feeling power within. Our learning day offers lots of opportunities to make choices and build inner trust. Developing the learning checklist, talking through things/asking questions/making decisions together, managing their time, deciding when they need a learning break and what kind of break to take, setting timers and using the Reminder App, planning and taking responsibility for their home learning, choosing and making recipes, and designing their self-directed projects are all great ways to develop trust in oneself as a learner. We also see mistakes as learning opportunities, as approximations that get us closer to learning important things about ourselves, the world and each other. This is the foundation in which shared power exists. When people feel comfortable with their own power and communicate clearly, they are more able to feel comfortable recognizing, honoring and sharing power with others.

I often read picture books with them to illustrate a BIG idea in a simple way. This week, I introduced the idea of trusting others with their own growth knowing that people’s own strength comes out to help them when they are ready, by reading “Toot and Puddle: You are My Sunshine” by Holly Hobbie. This book tells the story of Toot, who is at a low point and moping a lot. His friends try to do everything they can to make him better, but Toot still continues moping. When he is ready, the storm lifts for Toot and he begins to feel his strength, and act on it in his own time. I also introduced the idea of “Comfort Zones, Learning Zones and Panic Zones” with the kids as tool to building trust for oneself (we did a very modified and simple version of this activity, but thought you all might want to see the whole version). The idea is that, when we edge out at our own pace from our comfort zone to try anything new, we learn and grow. If someone else pushes us out too far (or if we push ourselves out too far, too fast), we hit our panic zone and this snaps us right back to our comfort zone. As part of learning to trust ourselves, we can make choices to step outside our comfort zone at our own pace, in our own time and grow. What is easy for one person, may be very difficult for another, so support means we trust someone enough to listen to them as they make their own choices to step out as they feel ready. I read “Bread and Jam for Frances” by Russell Hoban to illustrate this in a simple way. Frances’s family is concerned that she will only eat bread and jam and they try lots of ways to persuade her to try other foods, which only strengthens her resolve not to. In the end, Frances finds her own path to expanding her comfort zone.

Please Vote for Me

We watched the documentary “Please Vote for Me” on Monday. Weijun Chen, the director of the documentary films a mini-experiment with democracy in a third grade class in Wuhan, China. The kids go through the process of selecting their class monitor through a democratic process rather than the normal process of having the teacher select the monitor. The kids are asked “what is democracy?” at the beginning of the film and it is clear they have no idea as their culture has not taught any ideas about democracy. I wondered what kids here would say and I asked Laurence, Ollie and Charlotte to write down how they would answer if asked. It was interesting to hear their thoughts throughout the documentary as they realize we are not as different to the kids in the film as one might think. As Charlotte said “we do many of the same things, we just do it more quietly and politely” whereas in China people tend to say what they are thinking and feeling out loud, so what they are thinking on the inside tends to match what they say on the outside. I think that if we want our next generation of kids to be prepared to participate in the democratic process, it is important for them to feel a sense of their own power and practice sharing power, making decisions, communicating, resolving conflict, feel a responsibility and know how to come to an informed opinion as well as listen to others so that relationship is at the center of problem solving rather than being right.

Self-Directed Projects and Other Learning..

We decided to take a two weeklong exodus from all electronics for breaks or lunch this week and next to experiment with what would happen when these options aren’t available. So far, I’ve noticed Charlotte choosing to play the piano and draw ALOT more this week, as has Laurence. Ollie and Laurence chose the take apart electronics learning and at Share Tea they played card games for learning breaks:) I am hoping more time without electronics will result in more imagination and figuring out what to do rather than the quick, easy option that electronic games and videos provide.

This week we trialed working at Share Tea during lunch. The kids all picked out the learning they wanted to accomplish, and we tested it out to see if they could manage working there and focus enough to get their work done. I am excited to share that Share Tea was a great learning space and change of pace. I will send a video in the chat of the kids playing a fun game of “Taco, Goat, Cheese, Pizza”. This is a new game for me and as I watched them play I realized that this is a GREAT game to practice focus, attention and reaction time. So fun 🙂

For our recipe this week, Laurence chose Korean Corn Dogs. He was in charge of selecting the recipe we used, figuring out cooking times, and needed ingredients etc. He also supported leading Ollie and Sterling through the process of making the Korean Corn Dogs. They turned out great!

Our trip to Good Will was so fun! I loved hearing the kids’ amazement at the prices of things and especially the nostalgia as they were excited by old VCR’s, cassette tapes and DVD’s. It was fun to tell them stories around how we used to use these things and hearing especially Charlotte’s read on how these things are now often considered vintage and in demand again. I put out the electronics and tools this week so they could figure out how to take them apart. They often had to be problem solvers to figure out how to get things to come apart and they seemed fascinated to see how things worked inside when they got them apart. I am not sure if taking things apart will continue to attract their interest…we’ll see and feel free to send in anything that you think they might enjoy taking apart or ideas for how to use the spare parts to make something new.

Projects: Ollie began constructing and painting his WWII diorama this week and has started figuring out and planning how it will look and the learning he will share. Charlotte made a BEAUTIFUL flyer to advertise the pet walking she’d like to do this summer and she’s posted twice now to update her sort of journal process to share her plan for summer pet/childcare work. Her flyer looked like an art piece and I think anyone pulling it out of their mailbox would definitely take a look! Laurence continued working on his animation a few days this week. He has the action scene planned out and part of it animated and he’s now working on the frames that allow the main character of his animation to turn and look at the action scene. I have learned ALOT about how involved the process of making animation is by watching him…so very many tiny little steps and Laurence definitely shows so much patience and perseverance as he works towards making his first animation. Sterling will soon begin a project too, but for now, she helped me work on my project of sharing our learning on our Bridges Academy Facebook Page. I had a beautiful video ready to share of last week’s air pressure experiments, but it was too long. Sterling helped me to put both CapCut and Facebook on my phone, edited the science experiment video and helped me post it to our learning page. WOW!! She made it look easy 🙂

Photos From Our Week:

News & Reminders

• Reminder: No art class this week as it is spring break for Mooresville schools this week. We will resume art class next week 🙂

Highlights From Our Week…

• Laurence & Ollie are almost finished with listening/reading “Hunger Games”. As they near the ending, the anticipation around how it will end is growing. We are planning to watch the movie together once they finish the book. I have a great discussion guide to follow our watching of the movie. It is a great way to expand our conversations around shared power. Power over only lasts as long as Districts 3-12 don’t realize that they too have power within them. Once Katniss and Peeta show their power within, the energy is electric and spreads rapidly, threatening the perceived authority of President Snow and the privilege in Districts 1 and 2. Democracy is rooted in shared power and when each individual recognizes that everything in our world has a unique power that contributes to the functioning of the whole….we relax and feel more comfortable sharing power, not as a scarce resource, but a gift that exists in all forms of life.
• Charlotte is reading “If Cats Disappeared from the World” by Genki Kamaura. I have enjoyed listening to her summaries of this book and her thoughts on the content. The main character has a cat named, Cabbage. Charlotte loves animals and so having a cat on the cover motivated her choosing this book. I love the question the novel centers on, “What makes life worth living and what do we owe ourselves and each other?” She was about halfway through her book on Friday, so will be excited to hear more as she continues her reading.
• Charlotte picked our recipe this week! We made Dango. It is a dessert that is served in Japan, China and Korea. It is gluten/ dairy free and low in sugar which reflects the kind of healthy eating that Charlotte supports as well as the Asian foods that seem to intrigue all the kids. This was our first recipe that didn’t go smoothly and come together as planned as so it was a GREAT opportunity to explore getting comfortable with stepping outside our comfort zones to take risks, not always needing to feel certainty around how things will turn out. As we were experiencing complications and the tension was building, especially for Charlotte, I asked, “What if it doesn’t turn out? What would happen? What might the worst consequences be?” We can enjoy the process and experiment to figure it out and see what will happen. If anything, we could regroup and try the recipe again. In the meantime, we can make the exploration process fun and relax into the not knowing. We tasted along the way, added more ingredients so the dough would be less sticky and then tested out steaming and boiling times until we came up with a dessert we were happy with. I think it could be true that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. Once we step outside of the known, we are kind of “on our own’ and relying on our own ideas and intuition as we figure out possibilities and come to our own unique ideas about things.
• The kids have enjoyed playing basketball during lunch and so Laurence, Simon and Michelle had the idea to bring a spare basketball goal to us so we could play during learning breaks too! Simon took time out from work on Thursday to set up the net with the kids and they’ve really enjoyed having it right out back. Some of the best learning breaks happen when they have a chance to balance their energy with different kinds of activities! If they’ve been doing a lot of focused thinking to work through math goals…to balance it with wide open, physical energy means that they can come back to more focused academic learning feeling refreshed and ready to continue. Many thanks to Michelle, Simon and Laurence for bringing this opportunity to our learning space 🙂
• This week we’ve been thinking about “choosing your attitude”. This is another way to feel power within. We calculated together that we all spend at least 13 years in school. Every day we have the choice about how we see the opportunity to learn and how we experience it. Life is too precious just to be passing through! We can’t always choose the work that needs to be done, but we can choose how we approach it. My hope is that the kids see themselves as leaders who are able to contribute to their learning journey and how they experience it. They have the opportunity to choose the order of their learning day, the kinds of projects they work on, the books they read, listening to their mind/body to take learning breaks, the questions they explore based on their curiosities and so much more! Hopefully, this way of experiencing “school” will help them come to experiencing learning as a life-long process we all participate in as we engage with ourselves, each other and the world to come to new understandings and create new possibilities.
• Our study of weather continued this week with a look at the impact air pressure has on weather. We did an experiment to investigate what happens when air pressure changes. We took aluminum cans, added water and heated them up until the water inside began to evaporate and then we quickly plunged the cans into ice cold water. The heat inside the can and the cold outside created an imbalance of pressure which caused the can to implode. It took many, many tries to get this experiment to work and the kids were really into trying over and over again until they found the elements needed to make the can implode. In addition to learning science, this was a great way to learn to have the patience, shared ideas and tenacity to keep on working through a problem until you figure it out. I can’t share videos on the blog, but I will send some in our group chat. The excitement they all experienced when the imploding can experiment worked was awesome to experience!
• All the kids are experiencing work with complex math that requires powering through with patience and sustained attention. I’ve explained this week that in order for new learning to move from working memory to long term memory, the brain needs to repeat the learning enough times so that it begins to feel automatic and “easy” as it makes more and more sense. Ollie has been working on this with multi-digit multiplication, Laurence with multiplying/dividing fractions and mixed numbers and Charlotte with linear equations. Some days, they need to do 3 problems and then take a break and come back and do 3 more while other days they get in the zone and can sustain attention for longer periods. Noticing and being flexible with when to take a break and when to power through helps them to feel ownership over their learning process and who they are individually as learners.

Photo From This Week…

News & Reminders

• I am Excited to share that Bridges Academie LLC is official 🙂 I will share the Zelle account information with everyone, privately. Please note the slightly different spelling.
• I am working with the Future City Competition and hopefully, they will soon re issue the “big check” for the kids so that I can cash it for them once it is in the Bridges Academie name. They are all excited to use their individual $ towards their project work.
• There is no art class on March 12th 🙂

Highlights from Our Week…

Project Work has been a first choice lately for both Laurence and Ollie. Charlotte is steadily working on her project as well. I am thrilled to see them feeling excited about their project work as this is the learning that they have the most ownership over. When we experience our capacity to lead our learning and use our imagination, creativity, tenacity and agency to reach a goal or make a change in our lives, we develop and feel the power within us. The kids have identified, designed and created their learning projects themselves while I guide and support their efforts through providing resources, asking key questions, listening to them share what they are learning and suggesting next steps as well as helping them to plan/navigate how to work through and share their projects. They are each dedicating about 20- 30 minutes to project work each day and at times, using learning breaks to do project work as well.

Science….We expanded on the weather questions we were asking last week by diving further into investigating clouds and how they can be used to predict weather. On Monday, the kids simulated making rain clouds with shaving cream, water and food color. We learned that the shaving cream floats on water because it has a lower density than water. Similarly, clouds float in the atmosphere, even though the average cumulus cloud weighs (guess and then ask your kids for the answer:)) We learned that nimbus clouds are the type of cloud that produce precipitation, and that precipitation happens when a cloud is holding more water that the air can support. Later in the week, we learned about the scientific names for a variety of clouds and how knowing this can help us to predict weather. We also looked at a rewilding video to learn more about how to view clouds and predict weather. Please see Laurence‘s and Charlotte’s posts for more information. Ollie chose to write on a different subject this week and he will post on Monday.

Social Studies….When we talked about types of power last week and the kids shared their video clip examples on Monday, I noticed that weren’t clear on the difference between power over and shared power. I think the main misconception was that if someone had a “good goal” or a “good reason” that it wasn’t power over. I shared that people who seek power over gain power for themselves by taking away, limiting or minimizing the power of others. We looked at the example of when someone makes themselves feel big, by making others feel small and the kids added, by “flexing” on them.

We looked at a clip from the movie “Mean Girls” and the kids were able to come up with some examples of how some kids and adults use power over to create power for a small exclusive group of people who make the rules and exclude a larger group of people who follow along and are generally viewed as “less than” Power over sends a message that “I am smarter, stronger, better, faster and more capable than you are and so I am more powerful and worthy than you are”. I will continue to develop the idea that as we feel a sense of our own power within, we begin to know that everyone has power and once we know that it isn’t in limited supply, we relax and feel comfortable sharing our own strengths/ areas of growth with each other.

What If Questions…

We began to ask “what if” questions this week and I asked them what they thought the world would be like if we worked together instead of competed with each other. Ollie and Laurence shared their own ideas (Charlotte wasn’t with us on this day) and both mostly listed ways they thought that people and the world would be better without competition. They identified sports as “healthy competition” and thought this would be ok. Next, they did some research and looked to find other perspectives on what would happen if we worked together rather than competed. Both of their individual research mostly showed that we’d be more relaxed, happier, less anxious/stressed, and solve problems/get along better without competition. Laurence found the most balanced information that showed both sides. Positives were more collaboration, less stress and anxiety, fairer distribution of resources and stronger communities white the potential negatives included: slower innovation, lack of motivation, and a difficult transition for people/countries as economics/balance of things changed.

I am hoping they will enjoy asking “what if questions” and we will choose one to investigate each week. I think these kinds of open- ended questions help kids to be creative and innovative in imagining many ways to solve problems and envision how our shared world as well as their own individual world can work with growing perspective. I think this builds their feeling of the power they have in the world to create purpose and effect change. As kids feel a sense of their own power and develop the skills to use it effectively, they can contribute actively to an informed citizenry and an effective democracy 🙂

Basketball and Outdoor Play – We are regularly all enjoying going outside to a nearby park in walking distance from my house to play basketball, swing on the swings, eat lunch etc. It has been a GREAT addition to our learning day!

Math/Reading/Writing/Foreign Language ….All continued as normal this week too. The kids all wrote posts for their own learning blogs on Thursday. I gave them a list of possible topics from our learning week to write about and while Laurence and Charlotte chose our weather work, Ollie chose to write to share examples of power over and power within in the “Hunger Games” book that he and Laurence have been reading. Ollie will share his post on Monday 🙂

Photos From Week…

Reminders/News

• Exciting news! Bridges Academie is officially an LLC! 🙂 I will open a business account later this week and so at some point soon, tuition and expenses will be paid to Bridges Academie. I will keep you posted:)
• My intention is to ultimately work towards creating a learning group with a maximum of 12-14 students. Once we have 7 students, I will hire another teacher to collaborate with me. Bridges Academie can continue to function in our same space for now, but once we get beyond 7, will we begin to need a larger workspace. I am engaging in meetings with some amazing people to find possibilities for a space for us to grow into.

Project Work:

Laurence, Ollie and Charlotte are each working on individual projects. Longer term projects are a great way to practice the self-regulation and choice making skills that we’ve been working on. Building stamina, self-discipline, and taking responsibility for the informed choices they make in their learning process are some of the skills that help kids to experience the self-control and power within them to achieve purpose and effect change in their own lives and beyond over the course of their life journey.

Laurence is working on writing and animating his own story. When he shared his idea, he was researching and practicing how to animate and decided that he wanted to create a “story board” as a way to plan his story. I shared “7 Simple Story Plots for Writing Books” to help him find a structure for his story and he decided to write a “Tragedy Plot Line” with a twist. I also shared a story mapping graphic organizer with him so he could write down the idea for his storyline with characters, setting as well as a beginning, middle and end. When he began to write his hero’s journey story about “Shiego” in the beginning of the year, he found it difficult to continue writing the whole story and so left he us with a “cliff hanger”. I was excited that he decided to come back around to writing another story and can’t wait to see how his process goes.

Ollie wanted to make a World War II diorama. As he knows a fair bit about the world wars already, I asked him what he wanted to learn and what he wanted to share about his learning in the diorama. We wound up having a talk and Ollie did some research about The Treaty of Versailles and how the conditions of the treaty impacted Germany and World War II. We talked about the idea that Germany was forced to take all of the responsibility for WWI and that the conditions placed on them were meant to disable them from gaining power again. Our conversation led Ollie to grab paper and he began to draw out what he imagined his diorama might include and he began to share the start of a learning question. He has decided to begin researching the position of the Germans as compared to the Americans during World War II to figure out why they were fighting and what battles they both participated in. He is also researching supplies and ideas for what he might include in his diorama.

Charlotte made lots of great progress on her project to create a plan for her summer this week. The writing she did to share her plan so far is linked here. Charlotte is investigating volunteering at a pet shelter, babysitting/mother’s helper for families near her with younger children and walking pets as possible options for this summer. She is currently researching to find courses she might be able to take to gain credibility with parents and/or pet owners. She has an overarching idea and has come up with the ideas and steps she needs to take to shape her plan into a reality and we will continue working together to investigate the possibilities to work towards a final plan of action.

Our campfire project was a great success! Thanks to all of you for providing key ingredients for our cookout 🙂 Ollie, Charlotte and Laurence were able to achieve their goal of making a safe fire that kept them warm and cooked their food. As they built their fire and made their food, they had to adjust their thinking and problem solve. They were faced with a fire that only burned in short spurts, hamburger that wouldn’t stay on a stick, bread that burned when put over too hot flames and more. They did a great job working as a team to problems solve as well as experiment with individual ideas to find solutions.

Social Studies

This week we talked about types of power. A common misunderstanding, shared in our culture, is that power is a finite resource that can only be held by some individuals. The idea that we compete for power and that some people have power while others do not creates separation and rivalry between people in attempt to gain power. This thinking usually leads to “Power Over” where power is built on dominating one another, gaining control and is largely motivated by fear.

I shared instead that power is something everyone has and that it exists in all relationships. Power is a balance we create between us at work, in our families, with partners, governments and globally between countries. The power within each of us is related to a person’s growing sense of self worth and self-knowledge. Power within allows people to recognize their power and believe they can make a difference in their own lives and in the world around them.

In our families and learning communities, as we teach kids the skills of self -regulation and gradually introduce agency to support their practice at realizing and developing their own power, we begin to influence creating a world where our aim is not to maximize power over others, but rather to create the conditions where power can be shared as power to and power with. This kind of power respects the interconnected reality of our world and allows each individual the opportunity to exercise shared power in the context of their larger community. I showed them lots of film clips so they could learn to feel comfortable identifying and recognizing what the different types of power look like. Here are the links to a few clips that I showed: Karate Kid, Dead Poet’s Society, Kung Fu Panda and The Incredibles (Collaboration and TEamwork). For home learning, the kids are busy coming up with their own film clips and we will work together this week to look at their clips to identity and talk about the type of power in the examples they chose.

Science…

The kids were very excited about the possibility of snow this week and were looking at various weather apps to try to figure out whether or not we’d have snow, what time it would start and how much we’d get. They noticed that all the weather apps did not give the same information and wondered how meteorologists come to making weather predictions. They also noticed that the temperature listed on the app did not jive well with what they thought they knew about the temperature necessary for rain to become snow. Ollie and Laurence looked it up and found that 32 degrees/0 Celsius was the necessary temperature and noted that even though the weather app identified that it was about to snow that this didn’t seem possible given the temperature. I asked them if they’d like to do some experiments this coming week about weather and so I am busy getting together some resources so they can plan some weather experiments and learn more about what a meteorologist does to predict weather.

Math…

Everyone is continuing with their individual learning on IXL, as well as with flash cards and math games. Laurence is learning about fractions and has been working around doing the word problems related to fractions on IXL. I explained that word problems are meant to put the math skill into a context you’d actually use the skill in and offered to come up with an alternative to some of the word problems on IXL so he can actually experience using fractions. We use fractions when we cook together every week, so this and other possibilities will offer a great way to learn.

Reading/Writing

Ollie and Laurence are continuing to read/listen to “Hunger Games”. This book is a great example of the types of power and we will continue to connect the book to this topic as they continue to read. Charlotte is finishing up “The Hobbit” and choosing a next book. They are all reading/writing as they do research for their individual projects.

Foreign Language..

Everyone is working on learning their chosen language using Duo Lingo. Laurence and Ollie are creating conversation cards with me so they can increase their capacity to communicate in Japanese and French. I have found a site where Ollie can listen to and practice conversation around being at a restaurant in France and we’ll see if he decides to try out this option 🙂

Mindset…

I am continuing to make the process of how we develop power within and share power with and support giving power to others visible to the kids throughout our learning process. Last week, we explored average attention spans and investigated the best learning breaks and why choosing effective learning breaks supports the learning process. This helps the kids to understand how learning works so they can begin to feel like they have choices to make about their learning process. The kids have REALLY taken what they found out on board, and they’ve really owned the idea of making great learning break choices. This week Laurence and Ollie chose piano, all three kids chose a walk and basketball after lunch at the park. Laurence chose drawing while Ollie has been playing around with learning how to use Photo Shop. Charlotte has chosen reading, rotating the space she chooses to work in, and listening to music. Ollie also experimented with listening to different kinds of music with different learning options to see what works and he sampled breaking up difficult math by doing 3 problems at a time, taking a short break and then doing 3 more. Laurence and Charlotte have both found success with this option as well.

We’ve also been working on time management. The kids are taking turns typing the checklist we all come up with at the beginning of each learning day and Charlotte had a great idea last week to try making 3 checklists, one for each of them. Once the checklist is done, the kids are writing down an estimate of the time they think each item on the checklist will take to help them so they notice how much time they can take for learning breaks and still get all their goals accomplished. All the kids are regularly setting a timer for breaks and doing a great job at growing the self-control to stop a break and re-start learning when their timer goes off.

To support the idea of creating a “power to” and “power with” environment, we played games this week that require teamwork and collaboration including a balloon game where they worked in pairs to keep a balloon in the air together for as long as possible without it touching the ground and a chopstick game where they had to work together to get cheerios from one bowl to the next. I gave them extra points for signs of encouragement, teamwork, planning together, and support for one another. They caught on to this right away and so I will continue to use different games as a way to build a learning environment that feels safe enough for each of them to learn and grow into their own individual identity in a space where we work together and support each other rather than compete for power.

I have also been highlighting moments of flexing, one upping etc. in their communication and offering alternative ways to problem solve and feel seen. I’ve been noticing a switch in the way the kids talk with one another and have watched them notice, talk about/apologize and try a different way of communicating all on their own. It will take time to make the switch as our culture and school as a reflection of our culture generally teaches conformity, popular groups with power over, seeking approval, measuring up and more as a norm for how people function in the world together for a long time.

Photos from Our Week..

Reminders and News:

• Reminder: We do gather tomorrow 2/17 for learning, even though many schools are on holiday for President’s Day.
• News: I shared a potential next project with the kids on Thursday. They are considering and thinking through whether or not they want to engage in The Children’s Entrepreneur Market. It takes place in Charlotte on Saturday, April 5th at First Ward Park and on other dates throughout the year in Charlotte and in many other cities and states. It offers kids the experiential learning to design, create and sell a product to other kids and families that the market attracts.. Here is more information about the market! and the experiential learning it offers to kids.
• We are planning on making the campfire meal the kids planned tomorrow. Many thanks for sending in the hamburger, crescent rolls and gluten free buns we will need to make our meal. I will provide the smores ingredients 🙂

Highlights from Our Week:

• This week we continued to work on building the skills to empower and strengthen our own capacity to take charge of understanding and making informed choices in our learning process. We learned about our individual attention spans and found that it averages 20 minutes for 10 year olds, 28-40 minutes for 14 year olds and nearly 60 minutes for adults. We learned that choosing effective learning breaks is a great strategy for more productive learning. Learning breaks are an effective way to break learning into smaller cycles so that our brain has the chance to consolidate, and process learned information, so we are more likely to remember and apply it. Learning breaks also provide us with an opportunity to listen to our minds and bodies and stop when we reach the end of our attention span. When we try to push beyond this limit, learning becomes limited, and frustration increases. When we become frustrated, learning takes longer, is less productive and we are more likely to view learning as something we don’t enjoy. Over time, taking learning breaks allows us to stay in our “learning zone” and we find more joy and productivity in our learning. We watched “Above the Noise: How Much Screen Time is too Much“,did other research and shared our own experiences to figure out what constitutes an effective learning break. We learned that growing our capacity to increase our attention span so that we can achieve longer term goals requires developing self-control. We also learned that video games, Netflix and TV series watching, social media and video shorts are some of the worst learning break choices as they require huge amounts of self-control to start/stop and most over stimulate the brain so even though it seems as if we are just sitting around, our brains are not re-energized for learning. We found that research shows that listening to music, taking a walk in nature, short naps, doodling/drawing, talking with a friend, engaging in mindfulness and breathing deeply all are great ways to take a learning break. Laurence and Ollie have individual posts written on their leaning blogs about this topic and Charlotte will post on Monday. We will continue to experiment with the learning breaks that work best for each of us to create enjoyable and effective learning experiences that allow our focus time to increase over time so that we can more easily engage in and reach our longer-term goals and projects.
• We are now creating our daily checklist in the morning together and learning time management by estimating the amount of time we think each learning goal will take and then planning our learning breaks so that we get everything accomplished by the end of our learning day. The kids are also setting timers for breaks and learning to have the self-control to stop their learning break and re start another goal on their checklist with guidance and support from me as needed. Laurence is trialing using “Reminders” as an app to send himself evening and morning messages to help him stay organized and remember the things he needs to have and do daily. Charlotte and I have had lots of recent conversations on strategies for how she might take charge of waking up in the morning and for planning how her summer schedule might work.
• Laurence and Ollie have both chosen to create conversation cards with their chosen foreign language in order to increase their capacity to have communicate in the language they are learning. Charlotte may choose to begin this soon too!
• All three kids are writing casually during our learning week and formally for their blog once a week, on average. They have begun to read each other’s learning posts and provide suggestions and comments for one another. It has been a great learning experience for them to notice how their writing styles are all different and learn from each other. I create graphic organizers for their learning posts and support them in breaking information into paragraphs, adding more detail and editing their writing so that each can strengthen their capacity to communicate through writing.
• Laurence and Ollie are both using audio books to read along with “Hunger Games” and Charlotte is almost finished with “Hobbit”. We are also engaging in reading when we make our weekly recipe, when we research and find out about new topics related to our projects and when we have questions that pop up regularly during our learning day. (For instance, this week, Ollie and I got into a conversation around rights and whether or not kids have rights and especially if they have rights at school. We looked at some supreme court cases that upheld children’s rights at school and at the Universal Rights of Children developed within the United Nations.)
• We made mochi donuts this week which offered Laurence the chance to use the skills he has been learning as part of his fraction’s unit. Cooking together every week helps all the kids to work on communicating and working together with each other to make amazing food!
• All the kids are continuing with their individual math goals and regularly check their own analytics to see how long they are able to stay in the “zone” and be productive. I made math multiplication flash cards this week and all the kids, even Charlotte wanted to participate in strengthening automatic recall of math facts. Automatic recall makes more complex math easier, as each problem takes less time and so they can increase their productivity and focus time on the skill they are each currently trying to learn.
• Laurence spent a good bit of time at the piano this week and researched to find out how to change the “hertz” different songs are played at using the electric piano. He experimented with different songs to note how each one sounded when played with different “hertz”. He also played a song to share with me that he’d been learning in parts and now can play almost all the way through. It is amazing to me how many songs he has in his head that he can automatically recall and play without using any sheet music.

Photos From the Week…

News & Reminders:

None this week 🙂

Projects:

The kids are all engaged in projects, of their own design, that come from their own wonderings about the world and how it works. Feeling the personal power that comes from realizing that learning can come from within you rather than just existing as a process of measuring up to objectives and goals set by someone else is a powerful way to begin to see oneself as a creator and inventor. Designing and executing a project based on their own curiosities and questions offers the kids the opportunity to experience ownership over the learning process and how it can be applied to literally anything a person wants to learn. Going through the process of designing a research question, conducting research, making a plan for experiments based on knowing what it is you are trying to figure out, and drawing conclusions that potentially lead to further research and experimentation is the project design cycle and although projects often get more sophisticated as we get older, the process essentially is the same.

Laurence and Ollie planned and carried out their fire experiments this week. Charlotte wound up joining in on the fire experiments too and she offered some background knowledge based on her own previous attempts to make a fire. On Thursday, they gathered all different types of fuel and then figured out how to put it all together in a way that resulted in a fire that could stay lit long enough to keep people warm and cook food. Wind was initially a factor they didn’t count on and they quickly realized that in order to stop lit paper and cardboard from blowing away, they would need to put heavier fuel on top. As they added fuel to their fire, they recorded the temperature it burned at, the color of the flame and whether or not it was a good source of fuel. At the end of their experiment, they recorder their conclusions that in order to get bigger logs of wood to burn, they would need to light easy to burn sources of fuel first to get enough of a fire going over time to allow the larger pieces of fuel to catch fire. They ended up realizing that paper burns very fast and is a good source of fuel to get cardboard going which burns long enough to catch small pieces of twigs on fire which can stay lit long enough to begin larger pieces of wood to burn. They also learned that fire and wind don’t mix and that things can catch on fire if light materials aren’t put on the bottom of the fire. This coming week, we will use their knowledge to construct a fire and attempt to cook food on it. They would like to cook marshmallow smores and a more “lunch” type food as well. They want to use food that can be cooked on a stick rather than use a grate to cook on.

Charlotte is growing in her capacity to see herself as a someone who can design, create and follow through with a project of her own design. This week, while she is still figuring out how she wants to get her project off the ground, I provided additional work with the research part of the design process. She ended the week by deciding that she would bring yarn and supplies to begin her test project this coming week and she added an additional project to this coming week as well! She is working on figuring out how to plan her summer time and wishes to fill it with volunteering and perhaps babysitting. This is a great project as she will have to use all the elements of the learning, project design process to create a plan that works for this summer. On Thursday, we looked at a variety of possible volunteering options including “Cornelius Animal Shelter” and decided we’d have to make a list and go or call to find out whether they take teen volunteers and in what capacity. As Charlotte is also interested in earning money, we also looked up options for babysitting courses that would offer her more credibility with parents. We found that both the YMCA and Red Cross offer these courses. It will be interesting to see what kind of summer Charlotte designs for herself.

Math…

Ollie is working on addition with larger numbers and realized as he was working on these more complex problems that sometimes it is faster and easier to take the time to carefully write down and figure out math problems rather than to try to do them all in your head. Laurence finished with his decimal unit this week and moved on to fractions review on Friday. Charlotte is working on a Functions of Linear and Nonlinear equations unit and is happy to note so far that this skill requires less complicated multi step math than her previous unit. Charlotte is a also working a little bit every day on the checkpoint for her last unit. She has discovered that working on a few problems every day is a great way to apply her math learning at the end of a unit by tackling some really challenging problems. She has shown amazing dedication to returning over and over again until she finishes a checkpoint. This dedication supports her efforts to set a larger learning goal and break it up into smaller chunks that honor her focus time and patience so that she winds up building the habit of experiencing more joy than frustration in the learning process over time.

ELA…

I have been spending a good bit of time researching how to design reading and writing learning opportunities in a way that builds ownership and enjoyment for both. Ollie enjoys reading and gets excited about books while he is building his capacity to write. He often used speaking to generate text as a way to write previously and has begun to mention that he sees the value in doing his own writing. Charlotte is a committed reader and writer whose found a variety of ways to enjoy reading including websites that offer original comics, book series and more. Charlotte doesn’t always choose writing as a first choice, but once she gets rolling, she is amazingly gifted at sharing her thoughts in written form. Laurence usually doesn’t choose reading or writing as a first choice and, in an effort, to support reframing this thought that could solidify into a belief over time, I have been trying out different ideas to show how reading and writing threads through nearly every aspect of learning. Laurence and Ollie are currently using audio books to support reading and I am researching book series with their interests in mind as a way to show how varied the possibilities are for how to find reading enjoyable. We are also using close caption on videos so that they can listen and read at the same time which especially helps when they are trying to locate information for research and write it down. Laurence and Ollie are currently reading “The Hunger Games” and Charlotte is finishing up “The Hobbit”. We are also doing lots of non -fiction reading and writing as part of our research for social studies and science connected to our projects.

Social Studies & Mindset…

Charlotte is working on researching President Trump’s cabinet and key advisor choices to make a decision as to whether or not she would approve of these choices if she were a US Senator. This week Charlotte looked at the role of a Defense Secretary and what it entails and then researched to find out whether or not Pete Hegseth is a good fit for this role. She looked at personal background, previous experience, qualifications, legal concerns and more to determine whether or not he has the character and experience needed to fill this key role. On Friday, Charlotte began researching Kristi Noem, as head of Homeland Security to determine her fitness for this role. Charlotte did a great job at rising above the details to look at the integrity and experience of both candidates to share a well thought out opinion on Pete Hegseth and a forthcoming thought on Kristi Noem.

Laurence shared that he watched a video that described how C students are often better equipped than A students to become “successful”. Laurence pointed out that C students spend less time seeking approval by trying to measure up to outside influences and so spend more time being willing to take risks on their own ideas and capacity to create. We all discussed this idea and I shared Michael McMillan’s “Paper Airplane: A Lesson for Flying Outside the Box” to expand on Laurences’s idea.

On Thursday, before reading the book to them, we did the paper airplane flying contest that the teacher in the book used with the kids. The rules of the contest state that “you will be given 10 sheets of paper, you have 10 minutes for planning and making planes and then the person or team who gets the most planes over a 10 foot distance without crossing the start line wins” The kids were all super engaged in making their planes! Ollie had the most experience with flight and making planes while Laurence hardly had any. Charlotte looked up a video and had already showed her capacity to follow directions to make small folded objects during our previous model making. The results were interesting. All 3 kids make different kinds of planes. Laurence really struggled to make a plane and I wound up asking him if it says you can’t ask for help in the rules (it didn’t, so we worked on folding a plane together). Charlotte made a tube sort of plane first and then switched to an elaborately folded plane next. She also mentioned jokingly that she should just make a paper ball and I told her to hold that thought (in the book, ,this winds up being the winning idea). In the end, Ollie and Laurence tied with 5 planes each over the line and they competed again for the win. Laurence wound up winning with 6 planes over the line.

We had a great discussion following the competition on how the person with the least experience wound up winning and how if Charlotte had followed through with constructing a paper ball, she would likely have won. We also talked about how spending time planning and “thinking outside the box” rather than automatically assuming and following the rules might have led to different results. Michale McMillan, the author of the book explains that most everything we learn in school was created/invented by someone who thought outside the box and used their curiosity and learning process to come up with a new discovery or understanding. New discovery about oneself or the world happens when we have the courage to trust ourselves enough to think beyond existing ideas 🙂

I noticed the effect competition had on all of them. They were super engaged and trying to win was very motivating yet, I noticed that it came at a great cost. Laurence spent a lot of time worrying that since he didn’t know how to make a paper airplane that he wouldn’t be successful and all 3 placed a great amount of importance on “winning” even though there was no prize or relevant outcome. All the kids were much less likely to collaborate and support each other when I called it a “competition”. We will spend more time considering Laurence’s idea of out of the box thinking versus seeking approval and more about the value of competition and collaboration in the coming weeks. As usual, my guess is that balance is the key:)

We are continuing to work on relationship building. We are setting the stage for belonging rather than fitting in by highlighting and talking about things as they come up and as they share what they may have seen/done before in school as compared to how we might do it differently in our learning environment in an effort to work more collaboratively in support of one another. We are also working to build the communication skills to work through disagreements and to build a feeling of trust with one another so that it feels ok to not know, to not understand, to have a different opinion or way of looking at the world. Creating a supportive space where everyone is seeking the opportunity to learn more about who they are and feeling safe showing it authentically to each other will allow for more creativity and self discovery!

Foreign Language..

All the kids are working hard on learning their chosen language. This week we had a conversation about whether or not they could use what they are learning to have conversations in their chosen language. We talked about Ollie going to Paris and getting to use his French and how he can prepare to practice using French in conversations while traveling. I described that the “why” behind learning a new language in addition to other goals, is primarily to be able to communicate effectively in that language 🙂

Science …

This week, most of the science revolved around our fire building experiments as Ollie, Laurence and Charlotte experienced the results of the research Ollie and Laurence did last week on fire. Charlotte wondered why wood chars and turns black when it is burned and we found out that when the oxygen and hydrogen burns out of the wood, what is left is mostly carbon. We will continue to explore science in this way in the coming week and then head into a new focus in science soon:)

Self-Directed Learning ….

This week Ollie and Laurence made churros. They carefully read the recipe first and then worked through the recipe together. As compared to previous cooking experiences, I intentionally supported their taking the lead and jumped in only to answer questions as they asked or to redirect them back to the recipe and the directions. They successfully made delicious churros and better yet, used reading, following directions and working collaboratively to make a new recipe!

Photos from the Week…

News & Reminders

Bridges Academy will continue to grow as more families hear about what we are doing and imagine learning can be a collaborative process that begins with trust for children and their inner capacity to use the life- long process of learning to grow into understanding who they are and how they want to express themselves in the world. Please feel free to share our Bridges Academy site or pass along my phone # to families who may be wanting to explore this option further. Even though we are well into the school year, the right time for any family is not dependent on the start date of any school year 🙂

Thanks to all of you for being such supportive and amazing families. I appreciate your trust in me and love working with your kids.

Project Work:

This past week, the kids began to think through their next mini-projects! Laurence and Ollie started investigating fire and began the design process to figure out what they would like to learn. Ollie shared a video that explained how large forest fires spread and are contained while Laurence explained his prior knowledge about how fires burn in different colors. Together with my help, they made a document on Google Drive to start their mini project in motion! The research question they came up with is: How can we make the best fire that keeps people warm and cooks’ food? How can we put fire out safely? They gathered research about what fire is, the fire triangle, combustion and how to put fires out safely. They also learned that fire burns in different colors depending on the fuel that is burned and the temperature of the fire. They made a hypothesis about the temperature that water boils, cakes bake, wood burns, glass melts, matches and forest fires burn and then researched to find the actual numbers. This week, they will contintue to plan and conduct an experiment to find out what burns and what doesn’t and discover the optimal fuel to make a fire that is not too hot to sit around to keep warm and cooks food slowly without burning it. They will also make a table to show the color of the flame produces by different fuels and the temperature of the fire. Ultimately, once they have gathered all of the information they need, we will head to the park to try making their fire and cook some food so they can test their results.

Charlotte found a pattern for a sweater that she’d like to knit and began investigating this possibility for her next project. We went to the “Hearts on Fiber” Shop on Friday to conduct some research on the viability of her project. Based on the questions she asked, she concluded that it would be a good idea to make a first project using inexpensive yarn so she could begin to practice knitting before committing to a more complex project. She learned that making the sweater really requires knitting two large rectangles, two smaller, longer rectangles and then “sewing” them together to make the sweater. Charlotte wondered about adding a neckline and cuffs as well. Charlotte and I will talk more on Monday to make a final plan. On Friday, we talked about the goal that Charlotte achieved with finishing the Future City project and thought through how to use what worked and apply it to this next project. One of the judges asked the kids “what would you do differently on your Future City project if you had more time?” and both kids replied that they would perfect it and make it even more aesthetically pleasing. I shared with Charlotte how amazing I thought it was that she was able to finish the Future City Project without letting the fact that it wasn’t “perfect” get in her way. She could apply this to a knitting project! Knowing she is a beginner knitter; she can make a ” simplified or test” project and then gradually work her way up to the final project. Hearts on Fiber offers “emotional support project help” classes and this could be a great way to start her project in a great space with more experienced knitters!

Math this Week:

Ollie and I have been noticing that once he “gets in the zone” he is able to deeply focus and process math in a remarkable way! He has been working on word problems this week that involve multiplication but require careful reading to make sure the response he gives matches the questions. When he’s not “in the zone” he finds himself making quick reads that lead to errors yet when he is focused, he can quickly calculate and respond accurately. Laurence and Charlotte shared that this is true for them as well. We talked about what strategies help each of them to “get in the zone” and have the required focus and patience. I suggest possible strategies and make the strategies they are trying visible to them and love watching them feel a sense of personal power over their learning process as they discover what works best for each of them. Ollie is currently working on discovering math patterns and began working on place value for home learning on Friday. Laurence will work on word problems with money this week as well as use estimation as a strategy to assess the reasonableness of math solutions. This is a great “real life math” strategy as so often we have to quickly figure out whether we have enough money to make a purchase, assess how much we need of something etc… Charlotte began a new unit on functions this week and is busy graphing linear equations using real life problems to determine “best deals”, rate of change and how long it would be before a profit is reached.

ELA

Charlotte and I finished reading “Going Solo” by Roald Dahl this week while Ollie and Laurence listened to “Hunger Games” on Audiobook. Both boys have a copy of the book and tried different options to determine how best to enjoy the book. They decided that reading and listening separately worked best. They are both listening to a chapter a day. Charlotte decided to finish up reading “The Hobbit” this week and will likely finish up her book next week.

I created Oliie’s blog this week and he worked on setting it up to reflect his own preferences. All the kids worked on following a process to write a persuasive essay on “How to use the $250 Prize Money from Future City” Here is a copy of the template they used. Charlotte and Laurence posted their final copies on their blogs and Ollie is working on finishing his up next week. Once everyone is finished, they will share their thoughts on how to spend our $250 and then we can make a final decision together. I am working on helping each of them to see where they are in the writing process so they can each recognize their growth in writing.

Mindset:

We made a big shift this week towards all of us settling in and learning to work together with Ollie as part of our group. It has been such a great opportunity for us to think together about how we want to experience working together. This week we talked about trust and how trust is built. We began with some individual thinking and writing as each of responded to some questions: What is trust? Name someone you trust and why you trust them. Name someone who trusts you and why they trust you? How does trust get broken? How can we build trust with people? After we wrote individually, we shared what we wrote with each other. I showed them a marble jar to help illustrate that trust is built in many tiny moments over time as people you care about do little things that show you can count on them. We also talked about how fragile trust can be and how it can be broken in a moment. Trust happens when you can be yourself and tell the truth about who you are and be accepted. You don’t have to try to act a certain way just to fit in. School for most kids has typically been an exercise in fitting in rather than being able to express yourself and find belonging. Acting cool, saracasm, “jokes” that aren’t really jokes, gossip and trash talking are common things that kids have to work through every day at most schools and this practice makes it very hard to find enough safety and support to relax and be who you really are. We are aiming to create a safe space where we support one another and celebrate being who we are. It was beautiful to listen to Ollie, Charlotte and Laurence sharing their thoughts around trust and begin to shift the way they express themselves in relationship with one another. I am supporting and modeling the shifts in how we communicate with one another.

Foreign Language

Ollie, Laurence and Charlotte are all working on their respective language studies and all of them have shared their Duo Lingo accounts with one another so they can see and support each other’s learning streaks. Ollie’s family is planning a trip to Paris in April and we are working on a plan to support his practicing common phrases, questions and every day words in preparation for his trip. I shared with Charlotte the 80/20 model for learning language that suggests if you learn the top 20% of the most commonly used words and phrases in a language, you can learn to use the language more efficiently. I am busy gathering the most commonly used words/phrases in Spanish so Charlotte can consider learning these to help build her language skills. Laurence has been very dedicated to his study of Japanese and many days goes beyond his daily streak to do extra lessons.

Self-Directed Learning this week…

The kids made tempura shrimp sushi on Wednesday! Thanks to everyone for sending ingredients for our cooking! Laurence is working on a couple of new songs on piano and Ollie has wandered down a few times to check out the piano as well. We all spent a little time outside this week at the pond behind my house and Ollie discovered that the fish are starting to lay eggs. As spring draws closer, we will begin to notice many more signs of life around this area. Laurence and Charlotte are continuing with their homeschool art class. Ollie and I researched the testing process the military goes through in order to make something “stringently tested to military grade durability standards” after he noticed this sticker on my computer. We compared my computer to his Apple computer to see if his was also military grade tested. We both learned that the US military does some very intense tests including shock tests, vibration testing, crash tests etc.

Photos From the Week..