birthday birds

Say hello to our new batch of birthday birds! The sixth graders do a service project at the beginning of each year. It is their job to sculpt and glaze 300+ little clay birds. Making this many multiples requires a different set of art skills than spending lots of hours on just one piece, so it's a valuable experience.





The birthday birds were inspired by this project and these little birds a few years ago. When a kiddo comes to art on his or her birthday/gotcha day (or as long as it's the same week), he or she gets to pick out a birthday bird. We do summer bdays in June so that everyone will get one by the end of the school year. The kids LOVE choosing a special bird to take home. Well done sixth graders- thanks for working so hard to brighten someone else's day!

marshmallows and creativity

Our sixth graders took the Marshmallow Challenge and learned some valuable lessons on teamwork, collaboration, innovation, and creativity! The Marshmallow Challenge is a design challenge in which each team is given 20 spaghetti sticks, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. They have 18 minutes to build the tallest marshmallow holding structure.


After their first attempts we took a break to watch this:



Our sixth graders relished the challenge and congrats to Abe, Henry, Luke, and Oona! Their design was 24" high and Julien, Natalie, and Reggie came in at a close second with 23" high.



Adrianna and Morgan had a really creative way of using the yarn as a marshmallow holder!



Special thanks to NCS mom Linda King who found vegan marshmallows for me! I'll definitely be using them next year:)