Response to "An Alchemist" by Adriaen van Ostade (1600s)

I feel very tired.
The smoke is blowing in my face.
I am very sad to do all this work.
My arms are getting tired
because I keep going
up and down
up and down
up and down
with my bellows.
My tummy is gurgling of hunger
because I'm poor.
But if I keep doing my work
I can earn money for another meal.

By Oliver, Angeliese, and Alice

Mysteries of Harris Burdick

One day I went to the pumpkin patch. I picked one in the very back. And when I took it home it started glowing. I got a knife and slowly and carefully got it open. Inside of it were glowing seeds brighter than the sun. I was afraid of what was going to happen if I told my parents so I didn't. Then I took the pumpkin and threw it in the garbage. Then it blew up and the pumpkin was still there. It was perfectly new.

By Oliver, Grade 3

The Third Floor Bedroom

It all began when someone left the window open. I see doves flying off the wallpaper. It is a magic room and the best part of all the magic was the curtains. They were magic and someone climbed in the room and vanished in the wind. Five minutes later he was falling 15,000 feet from the building to the ground and I would not do that because it is scary and it is Halloween.

By Angeliese, Grade 3

Tree Poetry

It has some thick clouds and some thin clouds.
It has large mouontains.
It has colors of purple, pink, red, yellow, and gold.
It is a beach.
The water is colorful because the reflection.
It has sea water.
It is sunset!
Let's go home,
It is getting dark.

By Lillian, Grade 2

A breeze is blowing in my branches.
A soft summer breeze.
It makes a whistling noise in my branches.
The clouds are thin and don't look as soft as some days.
Are they hard?
No, just don't look soft is all.
The water has a ripple, a large one.
I am getting cold, and evening is coming.
I must think about dinner.

By Cheyn, Grade 3

Response to "The Sunset Tree"
The water is moving.
The grass is wiggling.
It's the yellowish, reddish sunset,
Dark and red lika a tomato.
The tree is swishing back and forth because of the wind.
The mountains are purple like a plum.
It will all be gone because the sun is going down.

By Oliver, Grade 3

Student Podcast: The History of Flight

Michael, a sixth-grader, has an astounding and constantly growing wealth of knowledge about planes, flight, and aerodynamics. He is especially interested in fighter planes of World War II, up to the present and into the future. Michael's fascination with planes in contagious, and this fall we developed a plan to share it. He worked diligently organizing, discussing, researching, synthesizing, and creating this podcast on the history of flight, right down to editing the sound file. We hope that you learn something new and get excited about the possibilities of flight yourself!

LISTEN HERE:

Art Inspires Poetry Inspires Art Inspires Poetry . . .

Have you ever thought about what inspires people to write? Beautiful artwork has been an inspiration for many, many writers over time. Today at Ignite, our Creative Writing class wrote free verse poetry as a response to Monet's painting "The Poppy Field." Then, we painted our own watercolor pictures and wrote free verse poetry in response to our own art. Here's the poem we wrote together:
















Response to Monet’s “The Poppy Field”

There is a field.
The poppies and the sky are bright.
There are four people walking.
There is a building way, way in the back.
You can smell the flowers’ sweet scents.
You can hear the field whishing through the wind. The bushes are like a horizon.
The clouds in the sky are like big, poufy cotton balls.

-Group poem written by 2nd and 3rd graders Oliver, Angeliese, Lillian, Alice, and Arianna