November 8, 2013 Reading with the Ladybugs

We had so much fun reading with the Middle Schoolers last week. Now it's our turn to read with the Ladybugs. We read to them and they read to us.

November 8, 2013 Timeline of Explorers and Explorer Contraptions

We love technology at Seabury School! Each Navigator researched an explorer on the computer and made a computerized poster of his/her findings. We presented our timeline of explorers to the whole school at Friday Gathering. 

Having studied the Age of Exploration it is now our turn to explore! After writing a paper entitled "If I Were An Explorer..." we divided into groups and came up with our own explorer contraption to get us where (and when) we want to explore. We made jets, space ships, ancient ships, time machines, tanks, rockets, jeeps and “Feet Machines” (for those who are exploring by foot.) It was like playing with Legos on steroids!

November 1, 2013 Reading with the Middle Schoolers

The Middle School students joined us at the Lower School for First Friday Gathering and special classes. They had some extra time and joined us in our classroom to read with us. 

They seemed to enjoy it as much as we did!

Finding out about the inside of ships.

Shel Silverstein and Fancy Nancy were a hit with these girls. 

One knew Greek gods, the other Egyptian, and the two had a great discussion.

There's nothing like a big bean bag chair to read in.

Junie B. Jones always brings out a giggle. 

Calvin and Hobbes--humor for all ages

Quick, call out!
Tell all you can reach:
the night is just perfect
for bats at the beach! 

These two, who met for the first time, discovered they have a lot in common.

October 31, 2013 Halloween Party

Here are some pictures from our Halloween Party. 

It was quite a spooktacular event with creative costumes, 

good food, fun games and crafts and happy Navigators!

A big thank you to parents who made it happen. 

And here is a story written by the Navigators. Each person added a sentence and the results are spooky!

A Monster Halloween by the Navigators

One day I saw a bat. It looked like a zombie practically and it glowed a little bit like a ghost. The bat turned into a vampire and then suddenly a zombie, a ghost and a bat came out of his cape. And there a guy who was watching and he started looking for some clues. The guy took a potion and all the monsters went *poof*. And then more monsters came out of another bat and more and more came out of the giant bat so much so that nobody had a big enough potion so they took over the whole world. But then a big huge pumpkin with a big scary carving on its face scared all of the monsters away. And then there was another smaller pumpkin that had 35 zombies on it and 3 skeletons and they all came to life. Ghouls, mummies and zombies came out of a gigantic pumpkin and even the scariest pumpkin couldn’t scare them away and no one would make them go *poof* and they took over the whole world. The guy who was watching had a lot of power that no one knew about. He started a new holiday where everyone dressed up as a ghoul or a goblin and everyone got used to it until the monsters that were actually real monsters couldn’t stand the teasing anymore and the day was called Halloween. And they celebrated by eating candy. But one day, that took a long time to get to, the monsters came back. It was the day before Halloween. The man was now 200 years old and a good monster, that didn’t like the other monsters, came. The good monster decided to put on a different costume so he looked like he was a bad monster and he scared the other monsters and they *poofed* back into thin air. The next Halloween, when they just finished celebrating eating their candy, there was a robot monster who had the head of a giant, scary, carved pumpkin and had the hands of a zombie and had the bottoms of a ghoul so it could fly and it had TNT in its head and the body of a knight. The TNT exploded and it was so big the whole head exploded and spread pumpkins seeds all over the whole world. And then all the monsters that were dead came back to life and took over the whole world and planted a flag and said, “This land is ours.” And they lived scarily ever after. 

October 22, 2013 The Soos Creek Salmon Hatchery

In conjunction with our study of animal life cycles, the Navigators and the Explorers went to the Soos Creek Hatchery in Auburn. Some coho have begun to run but most are waiting for rain down river and in the Elliot Bay. It was very exciting to see the various stages of the salmon's life: the adult, the egg and the fry.

Mrs. Gary tells us the background of the hatchery. It was established in 1901.

Watching the adult coho salmon in the pond. 

A frozen king salmon with a hooked nose

25,000 eggs per basket!

The eyes were wiggling!

Feeding the salmon in the fry stage
450,000 fry (fries?) in this retaining pond

This fry will be released in April, 2014.

The salmon change color when they head up the river to spawn.

The Navigators and the Explorers love field trips!

And they make great fish faces!

Thank you to our wonderful chaperones.