Session 6, Week 5
Growing up one of my dad’s favorite movies was The Blues Brothers. While my mom had no real use for that movie, us kids were always ecstatic when Dad found it playing on the T.V. We would snuggle in with him, laugh hysterically and after the most epic car chase scene ever, our response was always “That was awesome!” The feeling of those memories and the relationship I built with my Dad in the process has lasted decades. While I only watch The Blues Brothers every few years or so (I did find it edited to pass the legacy on to my children last year), I find myself saying “That was awesome” on a daily basis. The heroes at CHOICE make decisions and have experiences daily that bring that same expression to my mind. Here are a few times this week that we said “That was awesome!” while watching your heroes
In the Spark Studio it is awesome to watch them do hard things!
It is awesome to watch these learners have fun outside – rain or shine!
This picture shows two 5 year olds helping one another. They are both learning how to read. One needed help finding a MATH Montessori work. The other showed him how to match the letters in the word math with the label. If the letters didn’t match, then it wasn’t a MATH work. That was awesome!
There were about 3 dishes that needed to be washed. 4 people helped! There was a WASHER who washed the dish. There was a RINSER who rinsed the soap off the dishes. There was a DRIER who dried off the dishes. There was an INSPECTOR who made sure the dish was clean. There was a PUT AWAY-ER who put the dish back on the shelf. These learners have learned about working as a team and accepting feedback. Awesome!
These are evidence boards. There were four of them. The other board was a SAD evidence board and it looked, well, sad. A Spark guide had what she thought was an awesome idea: the Sparks would create these evidence boards with things that represented that emotion and then they would show the parents at Exhibition. The first day when the evidence boards were introduced, a few heroes loved creating the HAPPY evidence board.
After that first day there wasn’t much interest at all. No one wanted to work on them anymore. A few heroes even said, “It’s not fun.” Turns out it wasn’t such an awesome idea. Following the lead of the child, we shifted our focus onto something else: our song “Use All the Clues” by Courtney Lee. What they learned through practicing the song is the importance of body language and the message it sends to other people. It was awesome to see the Sparks communicate with one another by seeing the other person’s point of view and reading their body language message. They might not have received that message had we kept with the evidence boards.
One of the heroes’ favorite activities during the CHOICE work cycle this week was writing gratitude notes. It was Awesome to see little heroes express things like:
“I feel safe when you listen to me.”
“I feel happy when you play with me at recess..”
At the end of the day, we pulled out next session’s “$12 bills” instead of the “$6 bills” we used this session. When one hero got a peek at the new currency, excitement quickly spread through the studio. Heroes exclaimed,
“Next session we are counting by twelves!”
“You guys! We’re going to be counting by twelves!”
“What?! We are going to learn twelves!”
One hero made a math connection and said, “I already know the twelves song”. With a random tune, he started reciting twelves and then announced that it was like sixes, but you skip every other number.
Heroes started singing the different songs and noticing which numbers were the same and how if you wanted to buy things how many bills you would need of each currency. It was awesome to watch a concept that is sometimes taught in a dry abstract way, have enough meaning that it inspires a playful yet meaningful conversation to reinforce the learning.
One definition of awesome is extremely impressive or daunting. The Fire Studio experienced a bit of both of those meanings while preparing for and executing Exhibition this week. The Detective Quest was daunting. What the Heroes learned with forensics was challenging to comprehend, yet at the same time intriguing and interesting. It was impressive to hear the terminology Heroes learned. It was fun to watch them pull it all together in the end with their evidence boards. As guides, it is awesome for us to learn from a Quest what we would do differently. We can see where our directions were unclear or where we overshot the mark for the heroes. Guides learn from their failures every day!
There was also a mad rush to work on badge submissions – quite a few Heroes submitted badges for approval but were denied due to incomplete challenges or it being too late. It is hard to deny badges when the heroes are so excited to earn them, but it is a skill the heroes are working on in order to improve their excellence. It was awesome to see heroes own the denial and walk away with a comment, “I am so close, I can earn the Quest badge by session 7 Exhibition!”. It was hard to watch some walk away with a few tears.
It is always AWESOME to observe parent/hero interaction during Exhibition. Thank you for being so involved with your heroes!
The daunting task of blood typing was AWESOME! Some were nervous, some refused, some were interested, some were observers, some terrified, and it is all okay!
It was awesome to watch the Fire Studio heroes’ creativity (& team work) explode as they finished filming their sketch comedies this week. Creating string art with Paul was also an opportunity for creativity to flourish.
In the DELTA Studio it was awesome to see the variety of apprenticeships the DETLA Studio heroes were able to do this year. It was awesome to see heroes who did apprenticeships last year push themselves to do something longer or harder this year. It was awesome to see the initiative they took.
It was awesome to participate in several reflections where heroes were very honest with each other about where they are falling short and not living up to the commitments they’ve made to the studio.
It was awesome to watch the DELTA heroes work hard on wrapping up a variety of work this week. They are taking ownership of huge parts of survival camp, thinking through supplies, schedules, and logistics and they are finishing up year long badges.
They are completing Ex Works that they are passionate about.
And it was awesome to take short breaks from lots of work to play and be creative together.
Team building challenges:
A minute to win it competition:
An awesome Thursday morning games Chess time.
And of course our Session 6 Misogi
It is awesome to watch the DELTA heroes both work hard and play hard together!
The Children’s Business Fair seems to get better every year. The variety of booths increase. The challenges the heroes tackle increases. Their self sufficiency increases. Their confidence increases. Their lessons learned increases. There was only one way to explain Saturday’s fair… “It was AWESOME!!”
It is highly improbable that the heroes will remember all the details of the awesome experiences they have weekly (and daily) at school. What is probable is that they will remember the feelings, relationships and lessons learned that grow from each of these experiences. And even if they don’t remember those, they are becoming through each experience. The car chase scene in The Blues Brothers is an epic scene. But it pales in comparison to watching these heroes become who they are becoming. I hope as we all watch them progress, we are saying, “That was AWESOME!”