Welcome to 9-A!

Recently the Ninth Age took a field trip to the Walters Museum of Art. The girls enjoyed a tour of the Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome exhibits before venturing down to the studio to create some art of their own.

9-A and 9-B went outside again for some grammar fun! This time the girls applied their knowledge of helping verbs. They teamed up in groups of five and one girl from each team took a turn running across the blacktop and pulling a card with a verb written on it from a bag. If it was a helping verb she chose to either run back to her teammates and putting the verb in the "bank" or to choose a second card. She could continue to chose as many cards as she wanted, but if she chose a verb that was not a helping verb she had to put all of her cards back in the bag and run back to her team empty handed. The first team to bank twenty helping verbs won! The girls enjoyed the elements of strategy and risk involved in deciding how many cards to pick before banking them to avoid loosing them.

9-A had a blast celebrating Halloween in school on Friday!!

Recently, 9-A and 9-B partnered up and took our grammar lesson outside. We have been discussing verbs so we blayed a game to help us identify being verbs. Each girl spread out in a large circle and began walking. Each time she passed me she drew a slip of paper with a verb written on it out of a bag. If she selected an action verb, she acted it out as she continued around the circle. If she selected a being verb, she was banished to the Pit of Being in the center of the circle. There, she would chant, "Am, is, are, was, were, been, I'm stuck in the pit of being!" over and over until someone drew a slip of paper that said FREE THE PIT or until someone else drew the same being verb and took her place in the Pit. As you can imagine, this game was complicated but tons of fun!

The girls had a blast participating in a Greek fashion show on Monday! They dressed up as gods and goddesses including Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and more. Below are pictures and video of the event. Unfortunately, not everyone’s video turned out, but I included as many as I could!

The girls of 9-A got quite a treat this afternoon. One of the student’s grandmothers wrote a book called Teddy and Tommy about two young Least Terns who were born in a sand dune in the summer of 2009. Not only did our guest write the book, she also took the photographs that are used as illustrations. The girls learned a lot about terns and other kinds of beach wildlife. We even got a picture of Teddy and Tommy Tern in their Calvert baseball hats to hang in our classroom!

Here are more students reading about the creatures under their beds!