In social studies this year, we have been learning about the history of Chicago, using machines as a lens to guide us. Recently, we studied the Great Chicago Fire. Students were fascinated with learning about the second star on the Chicago flag and one of the reasons Chicago is nicknamed the “Second City”. I…
Team Time is a weekly event when teams made up of students from different classrooms and grades come together for fun, friendly competition and time together. Sometimes it is hard to find an activity that works for all ages in the team, but this week’s activity worked! For this week’s team time, students had the challenge…
While the other three classes were downtown at the peace rally, the kindergarten and first grade students had our own fun day of peace back at CFS. One of our big, exciting missions of the day was to design and paint our very own peace mural! It was really wonderful to sit with our very…
With less than a month left of school, I am beginning to reflect on the year. My class is truly feeling like a family unit, and we are all getting sentimental and appreciating our time together. By this time of year the students know all the classroom procedures and routines and can independently execute…
Last week, two of the classes trekked it in the snow to read to our neighborhood preschool, Families Together. We try to do this about four times a year. I began reflecting on why we do this to help explain to our students and concluded this reflection after our experience. Here are some thoughts I…
My K-1 class dove into learning about germs in the past couple of weeks in order to become “experts” and present their learning at Chicago Friends School community health day. Community health day is where each class teaches the others about some aspects of how to stay healthy. We began with an activity where, unbeknownst…