Session 4, Week 1: Worms, Rocks, and Monet

Our first week of Session 4 started off with a pleasant bang! The first Tuesday morning of every session, we gather for All-School launch, and this time the main item on the agenda was choosing gifts to send to World Vision using points converted to dollars from last session's Shark Tank Quest. We sure enjoyed seeing the teams' excitement as they chose their gifts. At the end of the day, we reconvened to report on their choices, and found that our school would be sending a mosquito net, a well, several chickens and ducks, ten fruit trees, and a goat. Hooray!

I have high hopes for the ES Griffins' enjoyment of this session's quest. The Botany/Gardening Quest is hands-on learning at its finest! Mrs. McDonald has worked her tail off preparing twelve project days in which the ES and MS will work in combined teams. Already, they're tasting, smelling, feeling, seeing and thinking about what they're going to grow and why. Oh, and having several pounds of worms arrive at the school ready for tending caused quite a stir!

In Wednesday's launch, we introduced Reed and Louisa to the concept of Big Rock goals, with Ben and Meg demonstrating the best way to fill a jar with rocks, pebbles and dirt. Springboarding off of that, each one set a Big Rock goal for the session and wrote it down (somehow, writing seems to make intentions more purposeful, don't you think?). Abigail and Camryn volunteered their time on Thursday to transcribe all those goals onto a poster. Just one of the many responsibilities that they are taking over for themselves! I must say that some of them set some pretty ambitious Big Rock goals for themselves this session. If you haven't already, ask your child what his or her Big Rock is, and how they decided on that goal.

Our Wednesday afternoon art projects didn't turn out QUITE like the sample I found on an art blog (fancy that!), but thanks to Mrs. Banister's volunteer help, they did go smoothly and the children seemed to enjoy painting outdoors, taking their cues from Impressionist painter Claude Monet (perhaps the ultimate painter-gardener!). We watched a couple videos on the life and work of Monet, and took note of the fact that he didn't create art in order to instruct or inform, or even to be understood, but to inspire love -- love of beauty, love of the natural world.

I hope these moments we share together, living out of our nature as image-bearers of the Creator God, will inspire a bit of that love as well -- joy in the process and in the creation, regardless of the results.