October 13, 2013

Greetings!

More Swain fun and adventures on this beautiful holiday weekend - we hope you are enjoying time with your families.

Click on any photo to take you to more pictures about that story, which are in our website photo gallery, "SmugMug".

Fall means field trips!

Swain students enjoy almost 100 field trips

during the school year, and there's no better time than fall to get out and enjoy the outdoors!

Our Preschool class went on their first trip of the year to Unangst Pumpkin

Farm - and although they had to leave early because of threatening weather, they had a fine time! Right, they are an attentive audience to the Unangst guide.

The Kindergarten classes also traveled to Unangst's - click on their teacher's name to see photos from Mrs. Stout's, Miss Zepp's and

Ms. Hanlund's trips.

As we reported last week, our middle school students were also off campus on their Outdoor Education Day.

The 7th graders traveled to Skytop Lodge, where they experienced the challenge of obstacle courses with (intentionally) wobbly ropes and bridges and exciting zip lines.

The 6th grade students journeyed to Hickory Run State Park to enjoy
games, hiking, and a campfire on a beautiful fall day.

More fall fun

October means "Fire Prevention Week" and we are always glad to see our neighbors from the Western Salisbury Fire Department (did you know their station is called the Swain Fire Station, because Swain donated the land it sits on?).

The firefighters made their annual presentation to Preschool-
3rd graders about fire safety, and specifically acquainted our students with fire fighters and what they look like when they are suited up - so in case of emergency, the children will not be frightened by all that gear!

A special treat for our students is that our very own first grade teacher, Mrs. Monahan, is a volunteer firefighter and she demonstrated all of her gear for the students.

Mrs. Akers and Mrs. Johnson have

set up a "Fall Market" in their Prekindergarten room's dramatic play area.

The market is complete with pretend produce, fall bulbs, fall flowers, and all the necessities for a fall picnic. They have shopping lists to fill out (great for encouraging inventive writing!), shopping baskets to load up with food, a real scale to weigh the produce, and of course, money and a cash register.

rs. McClary shares these photos of her second graders outside, taking advantage
of the great fall weather we've had. In addition to using the playground equipment, our students visit the chickens
in the coop, play tetherball, jump rope, spin hula hoops, check out the flowers they've planted, and create dramatic stories as they play. Busy children!

Buddy fun

Buddy visits are frequent occurrences at

Swain. Our older students like to interact with their younger friends in these settings, as
Mrs. Coverley's fifth grade students demonstrate in these photos with their Prekindergarten buddies.

The older students, who are now utilizing iPads as another tool in their classrooms, brought them along on their most recent visit to Mrs. Takacs' and Mrs. Hollenbeck's classroom. They showed the PK students an App with puzzles to complete using different farm animals. After the 'high tech' approach, they used 'low tech' materials like scissors and crayons to create a farm scene on paper.

Thanks for taking the time to read our stories!

1100 South 24th Street Allentown, PA 18103
610-433-4542

www.swain.org

The Swain School

1100 South 24th Street

Allentown, Pennsylvania 18103