Our First Week at Schoolcraft!

Eli and Sadie started school this week at a new school. They will be attending a charter school called Schoolcraft Learning Community that is located on the French Campus of Concordia Language Village which is located about 5 miles from our house. Schoolcraft follows the "expeditionary learning" model that focuses on leadership, fieldwork, and service projects in an authentic way. I am constantly blown away at the work that is being done at Schoolcraft and I can't wait to share them with you as the year progresses! Before you roll your eyes at all of this, know that this year Schoolcraft was named a Minnesota Reward school for it's academic excellence and scored in the 95% on achievement tests!

Schoolcraft is a very non-traditional school. First, their classrooms are housed in cabins. I'm excited to see what Eli and Sadie think of this situation when there is 3 feet of snow on the ground and it's 20 below or when it's pouring rain!! They have to walk outside to all specialist classes (music, p.e., art, etc.) and to use the bathroom.

There is only one section of each grade with the exception of first grade and each grade is capped at 18 students. There is a lottery to get into the school because of the low numbers. Once a family is in, preference is given to siblings. Sadie's class has 14 boys and 4 girls!!

Eli's class is more gender-balanced.  The teachers stay with the same class for 2 years. Sadie will have her teacher, AnnaMae, for kindergarten and first grade. Eli will only have his teacher, Sarah, for one year because he attended a different school for kindergarten and will get a different teacher next year for second and third grade.

There is no playground equipment. The kids can play soccer, explore, jump rope, play ball and the like. They go outside everyday for recess, rain or shine, 20 below or not which is why raincoats and rain boots are on their school supply list. These are tough northern Minnesota kids!!

They eat lunch with grades K-8 eating at the same time (that's 197 kids + staff). They eat family style and serve themselves. I will tell you that lunch is very chaotic, but big kids help the little kids and magically they all get to eat a very healthy and delicious meal.



Because they are located on the French Campus of the language village, they are learning French. They are also learning piano and they get a class in cooperative life schools (aka conflict management) taught by moi!



Schoolcraft truly is a special and magical place. I am so pleased that Eli and Sadie have the opportunity to be Schoolcraft kids.

Sadie's quotes for the week: "I didn't have a favorite part of the day because I loved it all so much." "Schoolcraft's chef's make the most delicious meals. They pick the best grapes."

Eli's quote for the week: "I like Schoolcraft, but I don't like school."

Eli lost his first top tooth this week!
 

How was my first week teaching Conflict Management at Schoolcraft? It was a blast. The kids are so bright and engaging and so willing to participate and share their thoughts and ideas. Because many of them have had conflict management since kindergarten I can see already that I'm going to have to challenge them. Being a peacemaker is easy for them, I'm going to have to encourage them to be leaders with their peacemaking!!

Yellowstone Vacation: Part 3

Day 6: We packed up our lovely camp site and headed for Idaho Falls. On our way, we did a little detour to see Craters of the Moon National Monument. The kids got to try their hand at spelunking and loved leading the way through the lava tubes with their headlamps.

 

We made it to Idaho Falls and stayed the night at a hotel. The kids were thrilled to sleep in a bed, go swimming and watch the olympics. I was thrilled to have a shower and coffee. Dennis was thrilled to get the oil changed in our car. Oh, the simple things in life!

 

Day 7: After more swimming and a trip to the grocery store, we headed toward Wyoming. Along the way we discovered a cute little ranch that gives horseback rides and they just happened to have a newborn calf!



The kids were too small to go on a trail ride, but they did get to walk around a little lake and on a trail into the forest. They thought it was pretty awesome.

Back into the car (like I said, we travelled over 3,000 miles!) and on to The Grand Tetons.

 

 

The kids were super excited to swim in the lake. They quickly realized that lakes fed by icemelt from the mountain peaks is really really cold.

We stayed that night in the campground in the Grand Tetons. Our peaceful camping was over, now we were staying in a campground that packs you in as close as possible with 300 other tents and camper-trailers!

Yellowstone Vacation: Part 2

Day 4: As I expressed earlier there are many pros to not planning too much on a vacation, and this is one of them. While we were camping in the Beaverhead NF, a ranger stopped by and told us about this crystal park where you could dig for crystals for $5/day. We were a little leary, but the guy promised that we would find crystals. We went armed with spoons as that was the only "digging tool" we had and we came out with pocketfulls of crystals. It was awesome and probably my favorite part of the whole trip. I could have dug for crystals for days...

After digging for crystals we drove into Idaho singing along to Yonder Mountain String Band to my friend's house in Challis. This little trek was amazingly beautiful and we also saw lots of animals: moose, big horn sheep, cranes and pronghorn.
My friend suggested that we stay at a hot springs in town. It was great. This was my kind of swimming with water temperatures in the upper-90s. It was fabulous!

Here is my friend Amanda. We were roommates in Yellowstone NP in 1995. We cleaned rooms in Canyon's cabins. It was not a great job, but it was a fun place to work.

Day 5:Amanda works for the National Forest Service so she knew of all the best places to go. She recommended a great campground and an easy hike for the kids.

Yellowstone Vacation: Part 1

Wow! I'm so far behind. It was my goal to get vacation pictures and Eli's birthday pictures posted before school started. Here I sit, an hour before it's tomorrow and they first day of school. Oh well.

Here is a little map of the route we took on our trip. We drove over 3,000 miles and saw lots of amazing things! Something you should know: the only things we had planned were the days I was seeing my friend in Idaho and the days that we were going to be in Yellowstone. The rest of the trip, we just flew by the seat of our pants and did what thought we might enjoy along the way. This is the best way to travel, if you ask me.

Day 1: We left home after Dennis arrived home from work. Our goal was to make it to Bismarck to stay with Dennis' sister's family. We arrived after 10, but we still had an hour of Olympic coverage to watch before bed!

Day 2: This was the day of lots of driving. We left at the crack of dawn and made it to Bozeman by 4 in the afternoon, which gave us enough time for swimming at the hotel pool and go to a brewery for supper, and watch the Olympics before bed!

Day 3: We stopped at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park in Montana. My rule is to never take pictures inside caves, because they all turn out horrible, like this one:

 

We hopped back into the car and drove toward Butte. We headed into the Beaverhead National Forest and camped at a small and very scenic little campground called Li'l Joe.

 

At this point we were in the mountains. Have I mentioned that I'm a mountain girl? I LOVE the mountains. The smells, the views, the trees, the rivers... they all make my heart race and I turn into a giddy school girl. It was such a thrill to be back "in the west."

The Sperlympics 2012

I've been informed that I am slacking in the posting department. I agree. I could make excuses about going on vacation for several weeks, a birthday party, and going back to work, but I'm above that. I will try to catch up on posts before I officially start work next week...

The annual family reunion took place at the end of July in lovely Park Rapids, MN. In honor of the start of the Olympics, we held our own version of the Olympics-- The Sperlympics with all sorts of crazy events that are highlighted here. Of course there were lots of other activities not pictured: the eating marathon, water volleyball, Olympic viewing, tubing/skiing/wake-boarding, floating dock diving, bubble blowing/popping, etc.

The newest entry to the Sperlympics this year was Giant Jenga. The Sperlympic committee did not make any rules regarding proper Giant Jenga attire so bikinis and short-shorts were worn. We do not recommend this. Hard hats and steel-toed boots are a must!

Kristen gives Giant Jenga a try.

Ben concentrating....

Yes, it got so high that the kids had to stand on a stool! Gabe worked the hardest of everyone.

The next event was ladder golf... I'm not sure who won, but it wasnt' us.

Swim break. This would be a great time to tell you about an event that we took gold in: the clam shell find. We found like 76 in 5 minutes. Shiya!

Receiving our medals for the clam shell find. I love the cooler podium.

Maddy, Sadie, Eli and Cole

Corn hole! It got to be a long and hot and ferocious competition. Again, an event we did not win.

Michele, Carl, Sadie, Gabe, Eli

Dennis and Sam

A must have event at any Sperle get-together is Shoe Kick. I think we took third in this event! Woot for the bronze.

The 5K. You will notice that I'm in this picture. I did not run as I think running is from the devil. Jaime and I walked...

Duane

Dennis and Kyle

Mick crossing the finish line

Jack patiently waiting for the finishers. There was a half hour between the running finishers and the walking finishers. Ahem.

The kids 1K (or so)...

Again, no Sperle event is complete without a game of Ninja.

Mel, Sam, Eli, Gabe, Sadie

We did take the gold in Ninja too, because Eli is just an awesome Ninja player and I believe that Ashley felt bad for our family's medal count!


Ashley, Eli and Andrew

The frozen t-shirt contest, which I, embarrassingly,  kept calling the wet t-shirt contest. This, by the way, is way harder than one would think. I think all of the participants fingers were beyond numb by the end.

Andrew and Mel

We took gold by the way.

Water balloon toss.

Water relay. The goal was to fill the liter bottle. Some teams prefered to soak the person who was holding the bottle. Sadie was a great sport and let us pour water on her head.

Mike, Sadie, Maddy, Cole and Grace

The official score board:

It was an awesome weekend. Thanks Greg and Michele for hosting once again. Thanks Emily for being the Sperlympic Commissioner.