With Thanksgiving here, I’ve been reflecting a lot about gratitude and the big changes that I have made this year. Moving to a new state, community, and school has been a struggle. I feel so fortunate that I have moved into such a welcoming environment. My experience with teaching The Evergreens has been just as heart warming. It’s a unique thing to find smart, socially conscious, and kind children. I look forward to teaching them everyday and they continue to surprise me with their knowledge and articulation.
In fact, they have also surprised The National Guard as well. In September we spoke about heroes. With all of the natural disasters our country was facing it was a topic that came up a lot. We decided to write “thank you” notes to some modern day heroes that we saw on the news, in the papers, and heard about on the radio. Milo wrote to The National Guard and thanked them for their courageous efforts. They responded:
“Thank you so much Natalie. The Knowing Garden is evidently an amazing place. Milo is proof. We truly appreciate his letter as it made us all smile! We did have a very tough hurricane season so Milo’s letter put all we do in perspective.”
I am grateful for being a part of such an amazing place and thank you for welcoming me and continuing to make my days here feel special.
With gratitude always,
Natalie Stone
The Evergreens recently finished a unit of study in math on Volume. The progression of this concept began with simply understanding the concept of volume and then quickly moved on to calculating volume by counting unit squares that would fit inside a shape, and finally to using formulas to calculate the volume of rectangular prisms (boxes).
Going back to our room renovation project, I invited the students to use their new knowledge to figure out how much space the old furniture would take up in a moving van. The box-shaped pieces of furniture were quickly calculated, which left just the two large sofas. But what to do when they aren’t shaped like a pure box? One group decided to imagine that the sofa was put in a large box and then subtracted out the space above the seat that wouldn’t “count”. The other group imagined breaking the sofa into several different boxes and then added those amounts together. Then they compared notes to see if they got similar answers. It’s fascinating to see the creative problem solving of our budding mathematicians in action!
In gratitude,
Jen Ceci
COMMUNICATION STREAMS
Natalie Stone, Evergreens Teacher
Jen Ceci, Evergreens Teacher
Lena Garcia, Head of Education – Teacher Mentor
Trish Valdez, School Business Manager
Shannon Minor, Board President
Facebook (private group), Community Forum
Shutterfly Site: photo archive
OFFICIAL CALENDAR: subscribe and never miss an event
