Last week was very eventful!  On Thursday, David Stone, our local Portland historian, came and told us stories about the development of Portland, from a simple clearing near the Willamette to a bustling city. His animated presentation held our students’ attention for nearly an hour.  Then it was off to see the preview of the drama presentation The Elves and The Shoemaker. What an outstanding job everyone did. We all came back with favorite dialog lines and characters. I hope many of you were able to see the full play this weekend. On Friday we took our field trip to the Portland Art Museum to tour the Native American collection.  The docents lead us through, emphasizing the local materials used in the art pieces we saw.  In this way the students could begin to recognize where and when an artifact might have come from, based on the materials used in its making. It was a hurried tour since there is so much to see and most students would really love to go back and enjoy it again. There is a “Discovery Room,” an area set aside for young visitors to explore and create, that we saw but couldn’t get involved with, and full rooms of canoes, masks, and other fabulous pieces we didn’t even see. Consider this for a family outing – there’s a gift shop, a cafe, kids are always free, and you can take as long as you like! This is an important week also. Our class will be taking the reading Oregon Achievement, Knowledge and Skills (OAKS) test again on Wednesday.  It is important to be to school on time as we will be in the computer lab by 9:00. A good night’s rest, breakfast, and a peaceful start to the day are all that each child needs to do their best. We are ready! Continue practicing math with IXLMath, our mathematics OAKS is next week. The students have some amazing and fun art to share with you on Thursday, at the Lewis Art Night.  I hope to say hello to everyone near our classroom door, between 6 and 8 pm.

This entry was posted on April 30, 2012 at 7:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.