Welcome to 9-A!

We had a lot of fun during our last day of school before Winter Break. Here are some pictures of 9-A at the Sing-Along and at our class party.

Last week Calvert held a holiday toy drive. Students brought in wrapped new or used toys to donate to families in need. Look at the mountain of toys we collected!

We are studying Ancient China in History class. The girls learned about Confucius, and we discussed proverbs and sayings. As a fun activity I asked them to try to guess the endings to some well known (to adults) proverbs. Here are some of the responses:


Make Your Own Proverb

A bird in the hand
 …means you have bird seed
…you get to keep it

Many hands
 …mean a job well done
…of an octopus

Absence
 …is disgraceful
…is not the perfect way to skip a test
…is nonsense
…is different than being there
…sorry you are sick
 …of color is bad

Out of sight
…could make your mother scream
… in the mist
…is hard to see

Too many cooks … make too much food

No news …no paper
     … take a snooze

Let sleeping dogs … sleep in or they will bite

When the cat’s away…the owner screams
    …eat his/her food
    …I play with yarn
   …the dog is bored

Birds of a feather
…fur of a dog

Every cloud has
… rain, a shape

All that glitters
 …makes a mess

It never rains
 …cats and dogs
 …when birds are there

The grass is always greener
…than the ocean
    …in the spring
   …the sun is more yellow
   …when the sun is out

Don’t count your chickens
 …when one is in the oven
   …count your money
   …unless they lay an egg
   …count your ducks
   …or they will move
   …when you know they are all there
   …until you count your eggs
   …because you might be one

You can’t have your cake
 …until you eat your dinner
…without candles
…until you rake

It’s no use crying
…when someone else is buying
…whining is bad enough
… if you’re proven guilty
…nothing will happen
…just get up

Last week the entire 9th Age took a trip to the Walters Art Gallery downtown. We toured the Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome exhibits and saw many of the things we are learning about in history class. Then the students visited the studio where they had the opportunity to make their own amulets. I stayed upstairs at the exhibits all day, but Miss Strom was able to take a few pictures of  some of the 9-A girls when they were downstairs in the studio.

On Friday the girls played in their first Crow vs. Canary game. There were three soccer games going on at once, and the girls did a great job displaying their skills!

We had a great time parading in our costumes. Our Halloween party was a blast! Thank you to all of the parents who helped to make our celebration successful!!

In conjunction with our study of Ancient Egypt the girls had the opportunity to make a piece of paper from strips of  papyrus, just as the Egyptians did many years ago. The papyrus strips come from a plant that grows in Egypt. After they have soaked in water for a few days they become pliable. The girls wove the strips together and placed their "paper" between two washcloths. We then piled heavy textbooks on top. Twice a day the girls switched out their damp washcloths for dry ones. By the end of the week we hoped that the papyrus would be fused together into a sheet of paper. We call this the papyrus experiment, because it doesn't always work. This year's papyrus did not fuse very well. This helped the girls realize how tough it must have been for the Egyptians to create paper to write on.

On Thursday the members of 9-A participated in the annual Greek Fashion Show. They enjoyed dressing up as a god or goddess and sharing some information about him or her.

We have just begun our study of nouns in grammar class. The girls came up with people, places, and things and filled them into a poem, Mad Libs style. Here is the end product!

To wrap up our study of Ancient Egypt the Ninth Age went outside to see just how tall the Great Pyramid of Giza really was. Mr. Howe tied balloons to a string and sent them 481 feet in the air! Many students were amazed that the Egyptians were able to built something so tall completely by hand.

Today we met with our Sixth Age buddies for the second time. The 9-A girls helped their buddies to make a scarecrow glyph. Everyone had lots of fun!

We have been learning about the difference between declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences in grammar class. As a culminating activity each girl wrote a declarative sentence on a piece of paper. Then she passed that paper to her right, and the next girl changed the declarative sentence into an interrogative sentence, and so on, until each girl had four different sentences about the same idea. We turned those sentences into pumpkins, which now reside on the door of 9-A. Each quadrant of the pumpkin contains a different type of sentence. We have already gotten lots of comments about our project!

Here is a tour of our classroom. The girls made it for Parents' Night but I got many requests to post it on the blog. Enjoy!
 
Untitled from sarah preston on Vimeo.

9-A has formed a partnership with 6D. Throughout the year we will get together with Mrs. Armstrong's 6th Age class. Today the girls got to meet the "Buddy" they will spend time with all year. Everyone had fun learning about their new friends!

We have been studying the Stone Age in history. As an accompanying activity the girls each wrote a composition entitled My Life as a Cave Girl. Today a few of the girls dressed the part to share their compositions. We had a lot of fun with this activity!

The picture below shows the correct way to set up your Ninth Age Accordion Folder.

The girls enjoyed a Crow vs. Canary kickball game on Friday. This will be their last Crow/Canary event of the year. There were two games of kickball going on at the same time and each team won one of the games. The girls did a great job!

Today we had the culminating assembly of March Reading Madness. We celebrated those who read the most in each class. 9-A beat 9-B by a very small margin to win the MRM basketball. Seventh through Tenth Agers read over 7,000 books!!!

Today 9-A and 9-B participated in the annual Ninth Age Egg Drop. The girls used a shoebox and other household items to create housing for their eggs. We then dropped the boxes off of the balcony in the girls' gym. Eggs that survived the first drop moved on to a second drop. A total of seven 9-A eggs survived both drops. The girls will write about their experiences in composition class this week. href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcnpiPAV5vjGu6ZflRKmMktr3Yq2N537DFQMUEAy_FQVV8lIDBZ1R_n_KFn8pGSfLN_CyFbUIifGuCq_D5TSXDI8pcQHK2QFoC00yp7yzL1gef62Cb5jrFDBsqeX-1oUKaSCeR0DMUcPQ/s1600/DSC00319.JPG">