Week four of Peninsula Bridge at the St. Matthew's Episcopal Day School site was filled with howls and triumph. The week started off with the 6th grade math class beginning their lesson with a run around the grass outside while howling like wolves. The math teacher Mr. Williamson likes to get the kids pumped up for learning something new by getting oxygen flowing to their brains. Meanwhile, the 5th grade has been working hard on their personal narratives in language arts, and are almost done reading Tuck Everlasting.
Outside of the classroom, the electives and enrichment activities are as exciting as ever. Monday, the TAs led enrichment activities like building catapults and putting on a soccer tournament in the spirit of the World Cup. I had promised the kids last Friday that if Spain won, I would bake chocolate cookies. I stuck to my promise and passed out the freshly baked cookies as an extra sweet snack during recess. On Tuesday, TA Edan continued the School of Rock elective, and Alani and I combined last week's ceramics and jewelry making classes to allow the kids to finish up their bracelets and push pots. We also added dance and claymation electives, and brought back the game "Lion's Tail" because it seemed to be very popular among the kids. In the dance elective, kids learned choreography for the official song of the World Cup, Waka Waka. On Wednesday, we made volcanoes out of 2-liter diet Pepsi bottles and paper machê. We also led a game of "Blob Tag." Thursday morning Edan and I led tours for some parents and school officials interested in the program. The schedule for the day was slightly disrupted and so the kids were running around a bit more than usual during recess after having to stay in the classroom for a longer period of time. The electives ran in the afternoon, and everyone went home excited for the next day's field trip: the Tech Museum in San Jose!